WKU News & Events

April 30, 2002

Western's Public Radio Hosts
Cambodian Radio Journalists

Bowling Green, Ky. - Western Kentucky University's Public Radio continues to promote democracy worldwide by hosting 12 Cambodian radio journalists for a three-week training session.

The International Journalism and Media Management Training Program provides media professionals from around the world the opportunity to work with experts in radio journalism. The Cambodian radio journalism session starts May 11 and ends May 31. An opening reception begins at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 11, in Academic Complex, room 213.

The three-week journalism program is structured on a revolving lecture-practice-performance model. Western Kentucky University faculty and staff teach on a wide range of topics including: ethics, fairness, balance and objectivity; sourcing; broadcast news writing and reporting; features and feature writing; defining news relevance; creating a news cycle; radio news formats; and newsroom management.

Seminars in the first week of the program prepare trainees for the second and third weeks, when they apply their knowledge as they create and broadcast programs in Khmer, their native language.

Because of the summer break at WKU, the international program will have exclusive access to WWHR, the student radio station, as a dedicated radio lab.

Access to WWHR will allow participants to work on original programs for broadcast over the station's signal and will give them hands-on experience in producing a radio news program.

Individualized instruction is emphasized as faculty from Western's School of Journalism and Broadcasting and Western's Public Radio staff supervise and guide the participants in the day-to-day operations of a radio station.

Participants rotate through the various newsroom roles, including news director, editor, news writer, reporter and anchor. They use field equipment for assignments outside of the newsroom. Their work culminates in feature programs that will be broadcast locally, and then taken home for broadcast on their local stations.

The multiyear project is a collaboration between Western Kentucky University's Public Broadcasting and Internews® Network, an international nonprofit organization that supports open media worldwide and is responsible for training thousands of journalists in emerging democracies in the past decade. WKU faculty, staff and students are involved in every aspect of the project.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recognized the collaborative possibilities of Western and Internews and was instrumental in bringing the partners together and in securing the initial funding for the creation of this program. The current program is funded by a $2 million grant administered through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

For more information, contact Jerry Barnaby at 1-800-599-2424 or visit the web site at www.wkyu.org

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