Category: Journalism
Revealing Romania Trip Winding Down
Posted Thursday, June 04, 2009 by John D Paul
Our two and a half week international reporting class that took us through Romania and Italy is coming to an end. We leave Rome for home on Friday. The group has seen interesting, amazing and historic things and met many interesting people on the venture through Romania.
We have each learned to find and interview sources in an international destination, how to interview with the use of a Romanian or Italian translator and we’re all learning about multimedia journalism. Obviously we’ve discovered many things about Romania, Italy and the function of the European Union. Even though the trip is ending, our work is not over. When we return, we’ll each have to edit our stories for presentation in a radio and television program. The Revealing Romania radio program is going to be aired on WILL-AM and the television program will air on UI-7.
UI professor searches for Romanian Roots
Posted Saturday, May 30, 2009 by Breana Lee Coco-Marks
University of Illinois Journalism professor Matt Ehrlich is trying to follow his family’s roots in Hungary and Romania. He found some things in Cluj and is now tagging along with Illinois journalism students.
View Matt’s success while in Cluj in this video!
To learn more about the Ehrlich family geneaology click here.
See and hear Matt's story:
See and hear Matt's story
Goodbye Romania, Hello Rome!
Posted Friday, May 29, 2009 by Pamela Nisivaco
Many of our readers may be wondering why a group of journalists covering various topics in Romania would be jetting off to Rome to finish their reporting. Well, the relations between Italians and Romanians living in Italy have been quite tense. Find out why this is when you continue reading by clicking on the link below.
Romania’s accession to the European Union in 2007 created many opportunities for Romanians to work abroad in other EU states and make more many than in their own country. While these opportunities benefit Romanians, countries such as Italy are not pleased with the sudden influx of foreigners looking for jobs.
That is not the only problem unfortunately. In certain areas of Italy, high crime rates are attributed to Romanian communities that have settled there. Romanians claim it is not them, but the Roma, or gypsy, community from Romania that are committing these crimes. Romanians view Roma as a completely different race of people and do not want them associated with Romanians. Basically, all these different groups are simply pointing fingers at one another, rather than trying to find a reasonable solution to the problem.
So, with Romanians being a minority in Italy who are blamed for many problems in certain Italian communities, we have come here to reveal what it is like to be a Romanian in Italy living under these oppressive conditions. Many of the topics we are covering in Romania also deal with the fact that a large majority of the Romanian population has chosen to go abroad to work and make more money since Romania obtained EU status in 2007. Some of them chose to come to Rome, but they are not always welcome.
After leaving Cluj Friday, May 29, we arrived in Rome. I think we all hope that we have gathered enough information from Romania for our stories, but we are also nervous to begin covering the Rome aspect. Our itinerary has us scheduled to eat at a Romanian restaurant in Italy on evening. I think many of us are hoping to find potential sources there, or, at the very least, some contacts who can put us in touch with sources for our stories. So, continue to follow our blog as we continue with the next leg of our journey: “Revealing Romania” in Italy.
To learn more about the tensions in Italy due to a high rate of Romanian migration, please visit a few of the links I have provided below.
http://www.romanianewswatch.com/2007/11/italy-romania-seek-to-ease-tension-over.html
http://europeanfoundation.blogspot.com/2007/12/racial-tensions-flare-up-in-italy.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7079769.stm
Romanian University Babes-Bolyai TV Studio
Posted Friday, May 29, 2009 by Luke Cleary
Dragos Nechita, a Romanian journalism student, offers an inside look at the student TV studio at Babes-Bolyai.
Mihaela. . . Romania’s “Girl Next Door”?
Posted Friday, May 29, 2009 by Shaina Humphries
Meet Mihaela.
But don’t call her that. Everyone calls her Michou. (Mee-Shoe).
She’s 20 years old, lives on her own in a big city, and she’s very close to her mother (who lives in another country). She’s a college student, a working journalist, and the nighttime caretaker for seven orphans.
She’s your average girl-next-door, right?
Okay. . . Maybe not the girl next door in our hometowns, but in Romania, this is a normal girl.
Click below to learn more about her.
Michou was an extremely big help to me during my time in Bucharest. As we worked together, I learned more about her, and decided that she was just too interesting a person NOT to write about.
She was born and raised in the district of Piatra Neamt, in Moldova, Romania. Like so many 21st century teenagers, her parents had split up. But unlike most, Michou did not live with ether of her parents. For some of her childhood, she was living with her grandparents on her mother’s side. Her mother actually lives in Italy, where she works taking care of an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease. She does this so she can make money (more than she would in Romania), and then send it back to Michou. She has one older brother but they’re not as close as she would like them to be, as he was raised by their grandparents on their father’s side.
A year ago, at age 19, Michou went to the big city of Bucharest, in order to attend the University of Bucharest’s College of Journalism and Public Relations.
Back in her hometown, she had spent some time working with children in orphanages. She had a friend that she knew through her work, and that friend set Michou up with a place to stay in Bucharest. She stayed in a church for a short time while she took exams to be admitted to the University.
Unfortunately, Michou felt unprepared for the University, and she didn’t get in.
That is definitely not the end of her story.
She was going to go back to her hometown, where her father and brother still live, but she decided to take a chance and stay in Bucharest. She began attending the University of Spiru Haret, a private university that she thought was a good school, and affordable for her.
The church where she lived was no longer able to host her anymore, so she ended up having no place to stay.
She found one opportunity, where she lived with an older woman for about a week, but that proved to not be a good fit for her.
Luckily, a friend gave her the contact information of an orphanage in Bucharest that was looking to hire. They needed someone who was
1.) Eager to work with children
and
2.) Would be able to live there with them.
Check. And. . . Check.
She interviewed for the position and was hired.
At the Centre Stantul Marcelin Champagnat, Michou works nights, and is responsible for the care of six children. So, she stays with them, monitors them while playing, keeps up with their school work, makes sure that they are bathed, mediates any conflicts, disciplines them, cares for them when they’re sick, and puts them to bed.
THEN, she wakes the older kids up at 6:30 a.m., makes them breakfast, gets them ready for school, and sends them off. Then she does the same for the younger children, but actually takes them to school everyday to ensure they arrive safely.
Spending so much time with these children, Michou has built a deep relationship with “her” kids. These children have been through some very tough times, so she tries to compensate for the relationships most have them have never experienced.
“You’re dealing with kids who have nothing. They don’t have a family like I have. I know if something happens to me, I can call my mom. No matter what. She loves me. She will always be there for me, Same with my brother and father. So everyday, I try to make them understand that they can come to me with anything. Good things, bad things. . . Their joys or their problems, anything! They can share that with me. Because I love them.”
As you can imagine, with a job like this, Michou is not exactly living the life of an carefree college student. But she says it doesn’t bother her.
“Because of my job, I have to make sacrifices. But it’s okay. I have really found a family there.”
Michou stays focused, spending most of her time when she’s not with the kids from the orphanage at school and working as a journalist. She has had some training with the Center for Independent Journalism in Bucharest, but works mostly for an online publication. There, her boss is a former teacher of hers.
In the past year, she almost quit journalism. There are a few things about it that she doesn’t like. Once, she was working on a story about a Roma student in Bucharest. After being interviewed by Michou, the student asked if Michou would send the story to her, so she could read it before it was published.
Michou’s boss was not too happy, and told her that it was unethical and that she shouldn’t have let the student read the story.
Michou’s response:
“I am human. I must treat the people I interact with. . . with humanity! This is MY ethic.”
Obviously, Muchou did not give up on journalism. Though it gets very difficult at times, she says you just have to keep trying, then try again. She’s begun to get better and faster with her writing, so she’s feeling more optimistic about the job now.
Today, she’s still living in Bucharest, and although is has become used to the big city life (for the most part) she admits that it is sometimes very lonely being in a city where she has never known anybody.
As Michou and I sat on the street and drank a couple of bottles of juice for our interview, she said with a laugh, “Sometimes you want to get a juice with someone, right? But instead. . . you buy a bottle of juice and drink it by yourself on the street.”
In the near future, Michou says she’d like to meet a few more friends in Bucharest, and “financial independence, of course.”
When I was almost finished with our interview, I asked her one of those standard “where do you hope you’ll be in the future/what do you want out of life” type of questions. . .
Here’s what she said.
“I know what I’m going to do tomorrow. And the day after that. Nothing more. I don’t ever plan for the future, because I don’t know what will happen. When I look back though. . . I just want to be able to say I helped people. A lot of people. Or maybe just ten people. Like Martin Luther King. . . people like that helped, and they never expected or wanted any fame from it. That’s what I want.”
We have Internet
Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 by Pamela Nisivaco
Our first night in Romania we were without Internet access, which was the most frustrating aspect of being in Romania. After a call to the hotel’s IT guy we now have access. Can you guess what you can find everyone doing now?
Many frustrated phone calls to the front desk only resulted in the bad news that Macs are different here and may not work. Everyone in the group felt lost and was concerned about how to contact relatives and sources.
A few of us spent Thursday morning taking turns using the hotel’s front desk computer to quickly check e-mail in 5-minute intervals. Then we all eagerly jumped at the chance to get on some computers at the Center for Independent Journalism. It seemed we would not survive much longer without the precious Internet.
Everyone was irritated and concerned about how to get work done without the Internet. On Thursday afternoon we spent an hour or so working with the hotel’s IT guy to change all the system preferences on our MacBook Pros so we could get access.
Since getting access, most people in our group can be found in the hotel checking e-mail, working on stories and simply enjoying being “wired”. What would we do without the Internet? We could barely last one night.
Ahhh…the life of a foreign correspondent.
A Visit to Romania’s Major TV News Network
Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 by John D Paul
University of Illinois journalism students visiting Bucharest visited Romania’s version of CNN Thursday. The group toured Realitatea TV, which is a nationwide news channel can be watched by nearly every Romanian.
Realitatea is part of one of Romania’s largest media conglomerates, owned by Realitatea-Catavencu. The corporation runs 25 media outlets from the news channel, with main headquarters located in a large old building in central Bucharest. Realitatea TV covers news throughout the nation 24 hours per day, seven days a week. It would be similar to CNN, MSNBC or Fox News in the United States. The corporation also owns and operates newspapers, other TV channels including a business channel, movies, magazine, radio and new media. The Realitatea website is Romania’s number one site for news among Romanians. The head of corporate relations for the corporation told the Illinois journalists 700 of the companies 2,500 employees are journalists. Realitatea TV has six local stations, which help the network cover Romania, spread around this Eastern European nation.
Because of a slowdown in Realitatea has suffered a decline in advertising revenue like many other media outlets, but the corporate spokeswoman said the ownership has promised employees, journalists and the public "we will not layoff people due to the economic crisis."
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