Newsreel

NEWSREEL stands for two EU-funded projects in which the Erich Brost Institute, together with European partners, has been committed to innovations in journalism education. The project partners have teaching materials and e-learning materials for future journalists. The projects were funded under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education programme line (KA203) by the EU Commission through the Hungarian Erasmus+ agency Tempus Public Foundation.

The project "NEWSREEL2 - New Teaching Fields for the Next Generation of Journalists" (2020-1-HU01-KA203-078824) ran from October 2020 to August 2023, already being the second joint effort by the project consortium. The EBI contributed its expertise in the areas of reporting on migrants and refugees as well as foreign reporting and developed teaching materials for this purpose. In the field of foreign reporting, an e-learning course with a total of five modules has been created.

Besides the EBI and the University of Pécs (Hungary), which is leading the project, ISCTE-University Institute Lisbon (Portugal), the University of Bucharest (Romania) and Masaryk University in Brno (Czech Republic) are involved. In addition, the Berlin-based collaborative journalism organization Hostwriter is cooperating as a practice partner.

The project partners are developing curricula and teaching materials for the following areas: storytelling in social media, graphic journalism, fact-checking and debunking disinformation, the use of artificial intelligence and voice assistants in journalism. Furthermore, materials were developed to raise the awareness of budding journalists for current challenges to democracy.

To this end, a research report coordinated and edited by the EBI and published in the summer of 2021 first analyzed the current conditions in all subject areas and identified deficits and innovation needs in journalism training. It served as a basis for developing the curricula and teaching materials. In addition, an online glossary and a teaching manual have been published. Further information and all materials can be found on the project website.

The e-learning materials were tested in pilot classes at the participating institutes and made available online as open access materials. A summer school took place in 2022 in Berlin under the auspices of Hostwriter, in which students from all project countries worked together on journalistic projects. The results and developed materials of the consortium were presented at multiplier events in Pécs (September 2021), Brno (June 2022), Berlin (September 2022) and Lisbon (March 2023) during the project lifetime. 

The Erich Brost Institute was already involved in the predecessor project "NEWSREEL - New Skills for the Next Generation of Journalists" (2017-2020, 2017-1-HU01-KA203-036038). Within this framework, EBI staff members Tina Bettels-Schwabbauer and Nadia Leihs developed e-learning materials on collaborative journalism. In this first NEWSREEL project, the project partners addressed ethical challenges in journalism, new business models and data journalism. The project also included a research report and an online glossary, as well as joint teaching events. For more information, visit the project website.