Dutch School of Journalism in Perugia

Just like last year a group of the School of Journalism in Tilburg from The Netherlands is visiting the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. Two lecturers and one student left last monday night and drove 1500 kilometers to arrive in the chocolate city on tuesday afternoon. The other part of the group, four lecturers and one student, chose the easy way and flew from Eindhoven to Rome.

Lecturer Michel Simons always wanted to go to the festival, because he heard good stories from colleagues. What does he think about the festival after having attended two days of events? “Not everything that I hear is optimistic. The mostly older Italian journalists from the well known media are struggling with renewing journalism. Yesterday I attended a workshop about the website Repubblica.it and I was very surprised that the newspaper journalists and internet journalists weren’t working together.” Simons sees that the international journalists are talking with more pride about their projects.

But Simons has also heard good things that he is going to teach to his students. Like the story of new media expert Sergio Maistrello, who teaches at the university of Trieste. He tells his students to focus and specialise in and about the local media and topics. If they focus on that, they can create their own unique things. It is old fashioned to focus only on the traditional media.

Another lecturer, Roy Mevissen, is visiting the festival for the second year. He thinks it is important to visit the IJF, because you have lots of discussions about journalism. Not everything he hears is innovative, but Mevissen thinks that’s not always bad, because that confirms your knowledge about the topic. He used discussions from last year’s edition about telephone applications, paywalls and the possibilities of the iPad in his lessons at school.

Mevissen came to Perugia by car: he drove eleven hours, another lecturer too. Mevissen says he really likes to drive. “It’s great when you are driving while knowing that your going to Perugia. When you pass the Swiss border, the world becomes more beautiful.”

The group writes about the festival on their weblog (in Dutch): http://fhjinperugia.wordpress.com

Daan de Hulster