Ten years ago, Vesna Dobrosavljevic was a budding Serbian radio journalist enrolled in the IREX Summer School for radio production in Kotor, Montenegro. Today, she is the information and business website editor for B92 Radio [11] (Serbia’s leading independent news outlet) and more importantly, a qualified trainer herself lending expertise to the next generation of Serbian journalists.
“In August 2001 I met with IREX in the first group of students invited to IREX Summer School on radio journalism. To me, that was my first encounter with the professional radio reporting assignments and a chance to meet people who I admired and who were my professional role models in person. It felt like dream come true. ”
Ten years later, not only has Vesna mastered traditional radio journalism skills, but also the challenges that the digital age brings. Journalists now must understand reporting for radio and the web but also how to use social media in reporting as media outlets in Serbia, as around the world, increasingly become multimedia platforms combining audio, video, text, and social networking.
Yet, Vesna does not remain content to practice her craft alone. Instead, she decided to pass on her skills and experiences to a new generation of journalists. This year, working with IREX, she provided training at the SHARE Conference on new media, for the IREX Summer School, and for IREX new media trainings for journalists, teaching dozens of journalists in the process.
“Being a trainer is still a fascinating fact to me. It has completely changed my perception and made me think of my work in new ways. I would say all those trainings were a direct and pure exchange between me and the other colleagues who trusted me. It has never occurred to me that something that became a routine to me could become a guiding model to the younger colleagues.”
Over the years, the IREX Summer School in Serbia has become synonymous for learning new skills in journalism and introducing higher professional standards to Serbia’s media scene. In the past three years, more than 150 trainees participated in courses ranging from media management to web reporting, broadcast production, and media law.
IREX Serbia Chief of Party Rich McClear who was a trainer in that 2001 summer school said: “Our most important legacy is the people we have trained. When I look back at my years supporting media in Serbia, it is precisely the development of professionals like Vesna - those who give back to the profession - that gives me the greatest hope that Serbian media is in good hands and it will continue to grow and develop.”
The Serbia Media Assistance Program [12] is implemented by IREX under a cooperative agreement with USAID [13]. The program focuses on building the capacity of Serbian media institutions and individual media professionals in print, broadcast, and new media.