Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter
Aldo Smith (left), president and chief executive officer of AMK Communications Ltd., listens to Drs.. Marjan de Bruin, director of the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), prior to signing a sponsorship agreement at the press launch of the Caribbean Media Conference and Expo and the Caribbean Peer Awards, held at the Hilton Kingston hotel in New Kingston on Thursday. - Ricardo Makyn/Staff Photographer
The US$3 million (J$195 million) expansion beginning next semester at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC) is expected to assist the unit in keeping pace with the new developments in journalism, according to Director, Drs.. Marjan de Bruin.
Speaking at the press launch for next week's Caribbean Media Conference and Exposition and Caribbean Peer Awards at the Hilton Kingston hotel in New Kingston Thursday, Drs.. de Bruin said CARIMAC would phase in two planned masters and three undergraduate degrees over the next five years.
Online learning
The institution will also establish a distance-learning programme.
CARIMAC will start a new UNESCO-funded course in online journalism for practitioners beginning in May.
"Graduates in the English speaking countries now have this increased market thanks to the Internet and also, within the diaspora, there is this hunger for news from home," explained Drs.. de Bruin of the potential for online journalism.
She acknowledged that the current convergence of media platforms online - including blogs, slide shows, video, radio, podcasts and so-called 'citizen journalism' -was a new phenomenon and just starting in Jamaica.
Right persons
She noted recent mergers such as The Gleaner Power 106 news, which has seen reporters simultaneously producing print and radio reports.
"The challenge is to find the right persons ... but I can't teach ... we have to get people with sufficient experience to get this further and stay close to what is happening in the newsrooms," she explained.
She said that Steve Ross, editor of BroadbandMagazine and a former lecturer at the prestigious Colombia Journalism School, whom she described as a 'friend of CARIMAC', had already pledged his involvement in the online course.
