Attending an academic conference in small-town UK naturally seems like something out of a David Lodge novel, but Cardiff is beautiful, and no one can say the subject “The Future of Journalism” is irrelevant.  I was there last week to present the applied research done by SIPA students with me last spring on journalism training in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda.  SIPA second-year Rebekah Heacock and alumni Ben Colmery, Adriana Diaz, Emily Gann, Jonathan Hulland and Eamon Kircher-Allen produced an extremely interesting report (There Will be Ink, available on JournalismTraining.net),  and I have been showing it to people at different NGOs since they finished it last spring. 

Most of the academics at the conference were interested in topics like a paper I heard on how twittering is a form of newsmaking and what the new models for paid content will be. Reconfiguring journalism curriculum to promote globalized journalism or to help students find jobs is another popular subject. Journalism training in Africa is not a subject most people have thought of, so I was pleasantly surprised by the warm reaction our work has had.  Bettina Peters, head of the Global Forum for Media Development, gave the opening plenary talk on the changing face of media development and cited our paper in her speech. I introduced myself afterward and we discussed possible projects we could do in the future. It was good also to meet South African academics Elaine Steyn and Arnold de Beer, whose work on training is on my syllabus this fall.