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New Group Of Egyptian February 04, 2004 Peter Laufer, WKU-Internews lead trainer, travels to Cairo next week to select 35 journalists for the International Journalism and Media Management Training Program. About half will travel to Bowling Green on April 15 for the second eight-week session, with the remaining candidates coming this summer in the third and final round. Laufer, an award-winning journalist and writer, will work with staff from the Al-Ahram Regional Press Institute (ARPI) to select the journalists. Also this spring, faculty from WKU's School of Journalism and Broadcasting will work with Egyptian counterparts to develop a pilot journalism curriculum for Egyptian universities. The training program for Egypt is designed to challenge mid-career professionals dealing with some of the most volatile issues in one of the most critical regions of the world. Every effort is made to address stereotypes and consider new ways of approaching the news and the news business. WKU faculty, staff and outside experts provide training in all aspects of the program. They include media, journalism, and business management professionals; teaching faculty, with a variety of specialized backgrounds and working professionals. These trainers specialize in teaching working journalists from challenging political and economic environments. After three weeks at Western, each participant will travel to a regional city to intern at a mid-sized American newspaper. These papers are selected on the basis of their interest and ability to support the program's objectives through an internship. The participants then return to WKU for a final week-long training-of-trainers session to give them the tools to be trainers in their respective newsrooms or through programs that serve to build media capacity in Egypt. WKU faculty and professional staff will conduct "follow-on" training with participants in Egypt later this year in order to expand the training to a larger pool of journalists using graduates from the program as guest lecturers and instructors. The participants from the first session returned home on Dec. 17. Their exploits, including the production of the online Pharaoh Times, can be viewed by going to www.wkyu.org. The project is a collaboration among Western's Public Broadcasting; Western's School of Journalism and Broadcasting; Internews ® Network, an international non-profit organization that supports open media worldwide, and the Al-Ahram Regional Press Institute (Cairo). The Program is funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development with support from U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. For more information, contact Jerry Barnaby, 1-800-599-2424, or email jerry.barnaby@wku.edu. More WKU news is available on the World Wide Web at www.wku.edu. If you'd like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
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