The Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management trains students in investigative journalism through hands-on skills-based programs. It discusses challenges in teaching journalism in the Caucasus region affected by conflicts. Topics discussed include the changing role of journalists due to technology, the definition of news, and crowdsourcing data. Initiatives at the school include the Friedman-GIPA investigative journalism prize and collaboration labs. It aims to support transparency, accuracy, and teaching reporting on sensitive issues impartially. The school also provides professional training and joins the European data journalism network to develop specialized courses focusing on data in journalism.

1. Caucasus School of Journalism
and Media Management
Teaching Investigative Journalism
Dublin, 2014
EJTA Conference

2. Caucasus School of
Journalism and Media
Management runs
graduate level, degree and
certificate programs in
journalism and media
management.
Faculty - American,
European and Georgian
journalists and media
managers.
Students - Georgians,
Azerbaijanis and
Armenians, with majority
in journalism jobs.
Teaching approach –
“skills” based, hands- on
studies.

3.  Challenges at the Caucasus School of Journalism
(CSJMM) in teaching journalism with the aim to
support the free media, which is affected by the
conflicts within the region and in Europe.

4. Current trends in journalism:
 How the role of the journalist as a truth-teller and
commentator becomes more complex due to the
technology revolution.

5. What are the news
Lord Northcliffe’s famous litmus test: “News is
something someone somewhere doesn’t want printed.
Everything else is advertising.”

6. Role of the journalist
 Truth-teller
 Sense-maker,
 Explainer, who reports things someone
somewhere doesn’t want reported, and who
does it in a way that doesn’t just make
information available but frames that
information so that it reaches and affects the
public.

7. Public
 The public is that group of consumers or
citizens who care about the forces that
shape their lives and want someone to
monitor and report on those forces so
that they can act on that knowledge.

8. Revolutionary media
 Technology revolution

9.  What social media does better: crowds
 When you aggregate enough individual
participants, you get a crowd. One thing
 that crowds do better than journalists is
collect data.

10. What machines do better
 Create value from large amounts of
data at high speed.

11. Challenge
for the journalists
 To swing more of their resources to the
kind of investigative and interpretive
work that only humans, not algorithms,
can do.

12.  Engineers have to understand
what makes a story “better”
to improve an algorithm.

13. How to write an algorithm of
 Conscious

14. Challenge N 1
Ethics

15. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Abkhazia Georgia
 64 media experts
 Ethical situations

16. Scenario 4
 International journalist team is covering war
from the battlefield; one of the sides is bombed
and smashed. Huge losses: human, material;
block posts of soldiers of opposite side are
everywhere. Journalists got their footage and
now they are on their leave the territories. On
their way, they meet one representative of the
demolished country in the army uniform,
wounded soldier, bleeding, there is a 5 years
old boy and boy’s mother with him (they are
sister and brother). They are bagging journalists
to take them with them, to save them as there is
a high risk that all of them die.

17. Findings
 Coverage of conflict is misleading, inaccurate
and extremely partisan and the reason for that
is self-censorship, which is caused by financial
dependence and prioritizing national interests
over professional responsibility;
 According to the respondents, journalists in
Georgia, when reporting on conflict
situations, give priority to their self-interests
and their own well-being rather than to
upholding the ethical standards of journalism.

18.  Be as transparent as possible
 Fundamental honesty
 Importance of the multi-cultural environment- it
supports teaching the skills of how to be
dispassionate, non-partisan and truthful in
reporting on volatile issues.

19. Challenge 2:
Teaching verification journalism vs “she said, he
said” journalism.

20. Accuracy first
http://coub.com/view/20iohhttp://coub.co
m/view/20iohhttp://coub.com/view/20ioh
It’s sparrow , not swallow

21. Initiatives that CSJMM implemented to
support investigative journalism in
Georgia
 Establishment of Friedman-GIPA prize
in investigative journalism;

22.  Josh Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning
journalist and former chairman and
current board member of the Committee
to Protect Journalists ( EJC)

23. Collaboration labs that bring together journalists,
programmers and graphic designers for the first time;
 www.newscafe.ge
 http://www.newscafe.ge/index.php/en/?opt
ion=com_content&view=category&layout
=blog&id=253
 http://newscafe.ge/khudoni/
 http://vimeo.com/78560846

24. http://kavshirebi.gehttp://kavshirebi.ge
file://localhost/Users/user/Desktop/presentations/CSJMM
_Dyblin_EJTA.ppt

25. Kavshirebi.ge presentation at the
Frontline_Georgia

26.  Producing the fourth official language
translation of the Data Driven
Journalism guidebook in Georgia;
 Data journalism Handbook

27. The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook: A Guide to
Documents, Databases and Techniques” 5th Edition By
Brant Houston

29. CSJMM involved in professional
training for working professionals
 Media Business Management
 Multimedia Journalism
 Photojournalism
 Social Media Management
 Internet Business Marketing
 Videography
 Communication psychology
 Internet Business Marketing
 TV Reporting
 New World of Journalism in the Digital Age
and etc

30. Joining the European network of online data
journalism as local learning groups.

32.  Area A: Media Foundation Courses (63 ECTS)
 MFC 613 Basic Reporting and Writing (7 ECTS) (Required)
 MFC 620 Advanced Reporting and Writing (7 ECTS) (Required)
 MFC 625 Audio-Video Training (Non-credited) (Required)
 Area B: Journalism Courses (28 ECTS)
 JOUR 630 Online Journalism (7 ECTS) (Required)
 JOUR 641 Social Media (7 ECTS) (Required)
 Area D: Elective Courses (7 ECTS)
 WEB 642 Web Technologies for Journalists (3 ECTS) (Elective)
 Area E: Student Media Lab, Practical Project& Internship (20 ECTS)
 SML 647 Student Media Lab (Converged Newsroom) (10ECTS) (Required)
 PRP 634 Internship (Elective) (3 ECTS)
 PRP 650 Practical Project (Required) (7 ECTS)
Developing specialized courses
that focus on data's use in
journalism;

33. There is a new emphasis on
collaboration and partnership between
professional journalism, non-
journalism organizations and the
public

34. Future perspective
 Implementing a forthcoming project inspired
by the notion that the audience should
participate in the investigative journalism
/journalism process. The project will create a
criminality map of Georgia. This will be a
one-year collaborative project between
academia, the media industry, a Georgia tech
startup (Jumpstart), and the Organized Crime
and Corruption Reporting Project.

35.  This community-driven reporting
project will track crime in Georgia by
using original reporting, court
documents, social media, and the help of
victims’ and suspects’ friends, family,
neighbors and others.

36.  Create a platform enabling journalists and civil society
organizations to track and verify incidents of crime
and compare them with official statistics.
 Create a body of journalists able to use data to tell
fact-based stories. Create a body of journalists able to
conduct crime incident reporting using citizen crime
incident reporting methodologies.
 Create a body of stories describing crime trends and
their impact on society. Create a body of stories
holding the Ministry of Interior accountable for
accurate, up-to-date, and accessible crime data.

37. Looking for the future
EJTA membership
Cross-Regional projects???

38. THANK YOU