The Channel | 2004 | September

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the channel | 19
With so many changes and developments in broadcast news, bringing
together its industry leaders from around the world to exchange their ideas has
never been more important. The News Xchange, Europe’s largest not-for-profit
international broadcast news summit, provides such an opportunity. Based on
the success of its first two conferences in 2002 and 2003, this year’s News
Xchange - November 18 and 19 in Vilamoura, Portugal - looks set to deliver a
stimulating mix of strong debate with technically impressive production values.
Underwritten by the EBU, the News Xchange held its first conference in 2002
in Ljubljana. Last year in Budapest nearly 400 delegates participated in the
annual event, representing 45 countries and over 60 broadcasters. In a recent
survey, 91 of 100 delegates said they highly rated the overall editorial and
technical content of the conference.
The technical production of News Xchange sets it apart from other conferences.
This year, it will combine the skills of the News Xchange team, Geneva-based
production company Actua Films, French-based Eventechs, Norwegian-based
broadcast graphics company vizrt, Portuguese broadcaster RTP and Portuguese
audio-visual company, Euro its disposal is the Eurovision international
news satellite system, which allows the delegates to link to speakers throughout the
world. For those in the conference hall, the intimate theatre-in-the-round design
permits delegates to talk face to face in a less formal setting.And the sophisticated
control room– equivalent to that used by 24-hour television news channels –means
News Xchange looks more like a 48-hour live studio production than a conference.
Vizrt has been a News Xchange sponsor for three years. “To my mind News
Xchange is the most important news meeting of the year,” says vizrt president and
CEO, Bjarne Berg. “It is the place to be if you want to be in touch with news
decision-makers fromaround theworld. It also provides us with a good opportunity
to hear and understand what is going in the news business to help us go forward.”
News Xchange is a collaborative event, the product of a small team of dedicated
journalists working in conjunction with news broadcasters from around the world.
This year, the growth and role of theArabic media is top of the editorial agenda.
News Xchange plans to involve key Arab broadcasters such as Aljazeera, Al
Arabiya, Abu Dhabi and LBC. The meeting will also be an opportunity for
broadcasters such as France 2, Sweden’s SVT and the UK’s BBC and ITN to
showoff their producing skills, as they lend their talents to sessions which examine
the state of public/private broadcasting, technological broadcasting innovations,
humanitarian media coverage, and the reporting of political elections.
Following fresh on the heels of theAmerican election, and with Spain’s dramatic
election earlier this year, delegates will have a chance to reflect on how they
have reported these events and what role they play as broadcast journalists in
the electoral process. “One thing almost all recent elections have in common is
falling turnout,” says Jonathan Munro, ITV News Deputy Editor and producer
of the News Xchange 2004 elections session. “We need to ask ourselves why
that’s the case, and whether we - as broadcasters - have any responsibility towards
mobilising the electorate, or whether we feel it’s solely the job of the politicians
to inspire people to get out and vote.”
Safetyissuescontinuetobeoftheuppermostconcernforjournalists.Alreadythisyear
63mediaworkers have been killed, nearly half in Iraq. NewsXchangewill workwith
the International News Safety Institute (INSI) to address these difficult and important
issues. NewsXchange 2004 is also proud towelcome the outgoing head ofUNICEF,
CarolBellamy,whowilldiscusshowchildrenarereportedinthebroadcastmediaand
ways broadcasters can ensure that they are treatedwith care and respect.
With this kind of technical and editorial energy, News Xchange promises to
keep pushing the bar higher to create an exciting and worthwhile event for the
international broadcast news community.
Sandra Cole looks ahead to this year’s
News Xchange event, scheduled for
Portugal’s Algarve coast in November
For sponsorship opportunities and more information contact News
Xchange Managing Director Jim Gold at+44 207 631 4538or
. To register for the conference visit
The AIB will be at News Xchange 2004 and AIB members benefit
from certain discounts related to the event. Contact Anver Anderson
) for more information.
Managing
your newsroom
In June, the European Journalism Centre in Maastricht organised
a high-level seminar on ‘Newsroom Management’ – it covered
leadership techniques, coaching staff, organising a creative working
environment that works efficiently, and dealing with conflicts in
the newsroom. For over a decade now the EJC has been running
twice-yearly seminars for editors and managers, and this particular
course has been so successful that it has became a
regular feature in the EJC’s seminar programme.
To a great extent, this success is due to the expertise
and popularity of Per Andersson – he is Swedish,
a former radio and TV news editor, and a trainer in
newsroom management since 1995. The Channel
asked him about his approach.
What is the focus of the course?
It is about how to deal with your staff. It is not about management, it is not about how to
organise a newsroom or about economy or anything like that. It is about how to deal with
different kinds of persons, different kinds of staffmembers.And about how to deal with groups.
What sort of people attend the course and for what reasons?
This time they came from Georgia, Greece, Albania, the Netherlands – from every corner
of the continent actually. In previous seminars we even had participants from other
continents. Professionally they vary from editors-in-chief down to news editors, so they
all have some sort of leadership position. Overall, the participants have quite different
backgrounds and quite different experiences and that is good for the group.
What is the maximum number of participants to achieve optimal training?
Fifteen to sixteen people. Not below seven; I would rather work with a group between
eight and sixteen. If there are too few participants, the energy in the group will go down.
The more people, the higher the energy. And the more people, the more experiences in the
group. The participants learn from each other in the discussions. That is the process of
the seminar, so we try to spend a lot of time discussing things, being as concrete as possible.
What real change does this course make for those who attend it?
The most important change is in how you perceive your position after the seminar – how you
perceive your position and how you perceive your group of staff members. It is not about
changingapersonorchanginghisorherprofessionallife.Itisabouttryingtohelptheparticipants
look at themselves, and the group they are part of, in a different way. So I say to the participants:
whenyougobacktowork,donotmakeanychanges.Beyourselfbutlookuponthingsdifferently;
try to use your ‘neweyes’ when looking at things and people around you and changewill come.
What is the secret of the success of this course?
It is about communication between people, and the secret is in making the group feel safe
enough to open up. If the participants have trust in each other and in me they can open up
for different views. If they think they are not safe they will not open up and it is impossible
to teach them anything. You have to open up to learn something new. It is very complicated
when the group is closed, so to speak. Therefore, at the start of the seminar, we work hard
to try and build some kind of trust. And it is important that the participants get to know
each other a little bit more than on the professional level only. To make a group function
you have to reveal a couple of your weaknesses because then the group empathy will
start and you need that because in that empathy you will open up for other aspects.
How did you personally get involved in this area of journalism training?
I found myself – about fifteen years ago – in big trouble in the newsroom. I was the
deputy in the big newsroom of Swedish Television. The newsroom tried to push the boss
out, and I found myself in the middle between my colleagues and my boss whom I really
liked – and I liked my colleagues too. But I had no tools to handle the situation, and I
discovered that in journalism there were very few courses on leadership, there was not
much advice, and there was very little support for managers. It seemed to me that it
wasn’t management training that I needed, so I tried to find what I was looking for in
other places. I do not think you can acquire such tools simply frommanagement theories.
I think you need something else, and I know I needed something else. So I studied gestalt
therapy for five years. It was a very special type of gestalt therapy – for group processes
and skills, so you learn how to deal with a group and what kind of processes go on in a
group. And you learn by doing; by sitting in a group and experiencing what happens,
which you then support with theory. This was my way of learning how to deal with
newsrooms. I did quit my job though and I became the general manager of a regional
radio station, 160km north of Stockholm. There I continued searching for useful tools
for me as a leader but after three years I stopped and said to my boss, to the managing
director, that I would like to work in education instead and since then – 1995 – I deal
with training. So I think I am better in talking about leadership than doing it myself!
For information on EJC’s courses see
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