Days of Constructive Journalism

The Constructive Institute at Aarhus University together with norwegian NRK and the Danish Strøbech Media are organising a “Day of Constructive Journalism” in all three Baltic states. A day full of presentations and workshops for 300 journalism students is planned, to inform and discuss today’s media and the new Constructive Journalism genre as a tool to critically analyse society’s problems and present methods to solve them.

The Constructive Institute:

The mission of the Constructive Institute is to combat trivialization and degradation of journalism by emphasising reporting that is more accurate, balanced and solutions-focussed.

The institute helps journalists and news organisations to apply constructive reporting in their daily work through providing access to an inspiring best practices portal, a world-class fellowship programme, relevant training curricula, and rigorous academic research.

We work closely with University of Aarhus, a young and modern university that has grown to become a leading public research university with international reach. Aarhus University consistently ranks among the first 100 world’s top universities.

The Workshops:

The plans of the workshops goes as follow:

Presentation by the director of Constructive Institute, Ulrik Haagerup:
The State of The Press and the question of Constructive Journalism. Why is it necessary for the media to rethink themselves in a reality with falling circulation for newspapers, a decline in shares for news on tv and a growing mistrust in the media? What is constructive journalism? What good would that do – if any?

Editor Mette Koue from Danish Broadcasting Corperation, DR:
How can you do constructive journalism in a digital news room and how can you make use of social media in constructive journalism?

Editor Marit Evertsen Grimstad:
Concrete example from working with constructive journalism in the Norwegian public service, NRK.

Former investigative journalist, Orla Borg, now head of fellowship program at Constructive Institute:
So how then could you yourself do constructive journalism? Presentation of different models of constructive journalism.

Besides that the workshop will include group discussions, possibly examples of constructive stories in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian medias on the particular days and presenting stories with constructive elements for the audience.

The dates for the workshops are as follow:

Tallinn University: 12th of March
Vilnius University: 13th of March
Riga Stradins University: 3rd of April