Meeting Tatjana. Image by Ljubisa Bojic

Last month some of the students of The Serbian web-journalism school met Tatjana Ćitić, the editor of the TV channel RTS (Radio Television Serbia) at the Fair of Brands. They had learnt the essential features of modern media technologies from her. She informed that after the activation of a new portal of RTS in November 2008, the internet traffic to the site has grown considerably.

On February 15th, Sandra Jakovljević conducted a session on Internet marketing, models and methods of online promotion. She taught them the necessary skills to achieve business goals on the Internet. She is a consultant on Internet and SMS Marketing and eCommerce.

On the same day the students had a practical lesson. From their project blog in Rising Voices:

They had to write their own news on the basis of CNN news about recent plane crash which took place in Buffalo, New York.

This post lists some of the students responses.

On the next weekend Lidija Kujundžić, a journalist, discussed with the students about the importance of teaser headlines in web writing.

Lidija explained that substance of teaser is in only one, first sentence. Students were informed how to „hook” readers with a lot of title examples. After that, they begin to practice.

On 28th of February Lijubisa Bojic imparted a lecture on creative commons. The slideshow can be found below:

The following week the students took their final test by attending the final day of the 37th FEST (film festival) in Belgrade. The idea was to do something creative for the final test. The performance of students during the final test represented 50% of the total marks.

The students had a task to create an editorial office. The editor had to be in the office and journalists had their duties: to choose one film to watch on FEST, to attend press conference etc. Later they had to write about film and to attend press conference of the film “Here and there”, where they’ve made audio and video recordings.

Students covering the Fest (Film Festival)

Dragan Milosevic writes:

Recorded so much, made two interviews and everything in “real time” general public was able to follow current events in the Sava Center on the Internet at www.webnovinar.org/demo.

Elected Editor, Bojan Cvetkovic, managed the whole reporting quickly and on the web page (blog) published events from the Sava Center as they were themselves members of the team on the spot.

The last day of the 37th FEST- slowly goes to the past, the past is history, and it now is an inseparable part of the students of second batch of Serbian Web Journalism School.

Compared to the other journalists present the students of the school did notably well. Read here summaries of what the students wrote.

Russell Gordon: Image by Goran Necin

Goran Necin reports that Russell Gordon, American photographer and reporter and a teacher of the Web journalism school spent 48 hours in detention in Serbia because of contempt of a court. Goran has published part of letter sent by Russell Gordon to his colleagues describing the human rights violation while he was imprisoned, which has been translated by Ljubisa Bojic in Global Voices.

Learn more about the school's teachers here. Here are the students’ blog feeds.

Link magazine, published by Media Art Service International featured an article on the Serbian Web Journalism School and the translation can be found here:

Native journalists often remain without a job but online Journalism allows them to work for information portals.

The school blog also informs about a notable effort undertaken with the help of Provincial Secretariat for Sports and Youth in Novi Sad, Serbia and with collaboration of “Integralac – web magazine for young people”. It is a virtual web journalism school and already 15 candidates have been chosen for the course.

The success of the first two batches can be measured by the numerous mentions in the media and all these great efforts recorded in different sites as described above. Without any promotion campaign for the third batch of the Serbian Web Journalism school, candidates have started applying. The Head of the schools says:

They will have to pass entrance exams to check the level of knowledge of English, managing the Internet, as well as personal characteristics (commitment and initiative), crucial for the demands of the schools of web journalism.