Briefly ...

Tanzania needs your textbooks

Old journalism textbooks gathering dust in your newsroom or home could help build democracy in Africa.

Bernardin Mfumbusa, a friend and former intern of Owen Phelps at the Catholic Diocese in Rockford, now heads the department of journalism and mass communication at St. Augustine University in his native Tanzania.

“We have 250 students in our department who are eager to learn,” he wrote to Phelps, “but our main problems include poor library facilities and lack of lecturers in core subjects like news reporting, photography, broadcasting and public relations. Journalism, as you may know, was deliberately underdeveloped during the socialist era in the 1970s and 1980s. We are paying the consequences. However, we are trying to do what we can.”

St. Augustine’s is one of just two journalism programs in all of Tanzania.

Mfumbasa can journalism books in English, to help train journalists to establish a free and independent press in Tanzania. If you have books you no longer need, contact Jim Killam at 815-753-4239, or jkillam@niu.edu.


Wanted: Ideas
for workshops

We’re looking for suggestions about speakers and topics for NINA’s 2005 workshops. If you have an idea, please contact Colin O’Donnell, first vice president, at 847-427-4551 or codonnell@dailyherald.com.

 

Training materials
available online

The Northern Star, the daily student newspaper at Northern Illinois University, has placed its newsroom training manual online. The site includes training materials dealing with writing, editing, photography, design, law, ethics and more. Professional journalists are encouraged to use the site for their own newsrooms’ training needs.

NINA plans
speakers
bureau

Training is an essential component of NINA's mission. Along with our list of workshops and conferences held each year, we're working on a way to offer more personalized training for newspaper staffs. We'd like to establish a stable of free or low-cost speakers to help promote a culture of training among northern Illinois newspapers.

If you or someone else from your newspaper have expertise on a specific topic, and would be willing to share that expertise with other northern Illinois journalists, please contact Jim Killam at 815-753-4239, or jkillam@niu.edu. The list of potential speakers and their topics will be posted soon this site.

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Newsletter

Winter 2004-05


A critical time for journalism

New NINA president Joe Corrado of the Naperville Sun talks about the ever-increasing value of training. MORE


Future generations
Every high school needs a newspaper:
It's one of the best ways to promote thinking, decision making ... and a safe school, says Randy Swikle. MORE

Writing
Without actors, stories are lifeless:
Most news stories are best told by focusing on the people living those stories, says Jim Killam. MORE

Connecting
Big ideas:
Lonny Cain of the Ottawa Daily Times offers five proven ways to get your readers more involved in the paper. MORE

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