August 21 to 26, 2011, Potsdam
Reach the people!
How can we encourage young people to read?
Almost 100 young journalists from 26 countries have applied for this year’s M100 Youth Media Workshop, taking place every year as part of the M100 Sanssouci Colloquium in Potsdam. Eventually, 22 talents between/18 and 26 from 14 European countries were chosen to take part in the workshop on the topic "Reach the people! How can we encourage them to read?"
In recent years, tremendous efforts have been made (by politicians, foundations and educational institutions) to reach poorly educated and politically distant social groups. Unfortunately, the success remained mostly moderate. Instead many young people seem to turn away from politics and the participation in social discussions, obtain less information from newspapers and rather visit chats and forums.
This development poses big challenges for politics as well as for journalism. Nowadays, media producers (regardless of the genre) are also faced with the question of how to reach people - how to encourage them to read their news and editorials?
These issues will be addressed at the four-day-long M100 Youth Media Workshop that takes place in Potsdam for the 7th time this year.
During the workshop, targeted at young journalists and emerging editors between the ages of 18 and 26 from all over Europe, various questions will be pursued and analysed:
1. What are the options to reach poorly educated and politically distant social groups via media and to engage them with political topics?
2. Are there approaches and examples to solve these problems in the participants' home countries? If so, elaborate.
3. Does the issue have a high significance in the participants' home countries and how is it dealt with?
4. Are there studies about the proportion of poorly educated social youths in the participants' home countries' population?
5. How do the participants aim to reach this particular target audience with their journalistic work?
Aim of the workshop is to use the diverse experiences, backgrounds, ideas and visions of the participants from many different countries to create a wide-ranging view on the topic for the whole of Europe. Based on their shared knowledge, methods and a precise format will be developed during the workshop to tackle the issue of how the various media can reach poorly educated and politically distant social groups and generate their interest in political topics.
The M100 Youth Media Workshop 2011 is supported by the City of Potsdam, Federal Foreign Office, the ZEIT Foundation and Bertelsmann AG; co-operation partners include UFA, „Du hast die Macht!“, Intajour - International Academy of Journalism, European Youth Press and the German Commission for UNESCO. It takes place in Medieninnovationszentrum Babelsberg (MIZ).
