Experts form Perm and the UK to discuss journalism

Photo by Yekaterina Gasper

Perm State National Research University  (Perm University) has become the venue for the International conference on “Modern trends in Journalism” with the experts coming from Perm, Moscow, the UK and Kyrgyzstan.

The key speakers at the conference were Andrew Adams, the representative of Oxford-Perm Association, and Paddy Coulter, director of Oxford Global Media consultancy  (Oxford, the UK), Anastasiya Valeeva, data journalism lecturer at the American University of Central Asia (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan), Luke Sproule, BBC News Editor Northern Ireland (the UK, presentation by  Skype), Ekaterina Kravchenko, Forbes Magazine Moscow editor (Moscow).

“Digital technologies have built a new reality where one can become one’s own director or journalist. This brings about the need to create a new form of interaction between the journalists and the society and thus calls for a new professional ethics”, noted Dmitry Krasilnikov, the Chair of Perm Region Public Chamber and the Perm University Vice-Rector, in his address.

Perm and Oxford have had a long successful history of twinned relationship, making its 25 years anniversary in 2020. To mark this date both cities are planning a range of joined projects. 

“The conference has become a further step in our long-term links with Oxford, which were highly assessed by the British Consul-General in Yekaterinburg Richard Dewell who has recently visited Perm. The Consul-General also expressed the willingness to support  joint projects within the link in the future”, said Elena Anissimova, head of Perm City Administration Office. 

The conferences featured the presentation on “News Media Trends in the Digital Age: how trust, truth and journalistic ethics are faring in the new media landscape” by Paddy Coulter, who stressed that  “global trends in modern journalism are quite complex and changing fast, making truth much more important than ever before”. 

Anastasiya Valeeva presented on “Putting data in the right context to make impact” explaining how an analysis of publicly available data can make compelling in-depth news stories.  Luke Sproule expanded on the place of regional journalism in the modern context.  The workshops within the conference day were devoted to data-journalism, fact-checking and working with press-releases. The conference participants included  lectures and students of the Perm University, editors and journalists from local media. The conference was jointly organized by the Perm University, Perm Regional Public Chamber, “Business Class” and Oxford-Perm Association