SOUTHEAST ASIA TEAM IN 2006 RELAY FOR LIFE

Dengan koordinasi oleh Chris Mills, mahasiswa AS yang pernah tinggal 3 tahun di Indonesia, beberapa mahasiswa Indonesia di Ohio University menjadi supporter utama dalam acara Relay for Life. Acara tersebut merupakan sebuah program penggalangan dana untuk mendukung para penderita kanker di AS. Tim yang mayoritas annggotanya adalah para mahasiswa Indonesia tersebut berhasil mengumpulkan dana sebesar $1,765. Bahkan Sandra Nahdar (cowok) dinobatkan sebagai Miss Relay atas kelihaiannya berperan sebagai perempuan dalam lomba yang diselenggarakan oleh panitia. Berikut laporan berita lengkapnya yang di muat di Monsoon edisi Spring 2005-2006.

Ohio University’s Relay for Life, a fundraising event for the American Cancer Society, took place May 19-20 at Ohio University’s driving range. The 18-hour relay walk began at 6:00pm on Friday, May 19 and ended at noon on Saturday, May 20. Chris Mills, graduate student in the Southeast Asian Studies Program, organized a team for this year’s event. Members of ‘Team Semangat’, meaning ‘spirit’ in Indonesian, included Team Captains Chris Mills and John Innis, Lewinna Aguskin, Muhammad Chozin, Dave Cramer, Erda Handayani, Lina Himawan, Drew, and Nancy McDaniel, Farid Muttaqin, Sandra Nahdar, Anis Sundusiyah, Pichayalak Pichayakul, Karla Schneider, Rudi Sukandar and Ezki Widianti.

Team Semangat’s fundraising efforts were a huge success. In addition to personal donations received, the team held a benefit garage sale and sold chicken satay the night of the event. In total, the team raised $1,765 to benefit the American Cancer Society. Team Semangat earned special recognition from the organizers of the event by being awarded the Team Spirit plaque and our own Sandra Nahdar, dressed in an Indonesian kebaya, was awarded the title of ‘Miss Relay’.

Source: http://www.ohiou.edu/seas/Monsoon_Spring_05_06.pdf

Indonesian broadcasters tap Scripps' expertise

July 16, 2007

As oppressive regimes give way to more open, democratic societies around the globe, redeveloping nations often have little idea how to effectively implement a new privilege: freedom of the press. For the past week, the Scripps College of Communication has been helping 17 broadcast journalists from Indonesia face the opportunities and challenges of reporting news in an open society.

The journalists are participating in a State Department-funded exchange program at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism through Tuesday. Specifically, they are studying coverage of ethnic diversity and conflict. This part of their training will be followed by three-week internships at TV stations around Ohio.

"Press freedom is still a relatively new thing in their country," said Associate Professor of Journalism Mary Rogus, who led a seminar for the journalists in Jakarta in March and is participating in this one. Nearly 10 years after the end of Indonesia's authoritarian Suharto regime, television media is exploding there.

"We (Americans) have been doing this television thing for a long time now, and we've figured some things out," Rogus said. When covering conflict, she said, "It's not our job to fix things, but it is our job to give people the tools to fix things and not make them worse."

Dandhy Dwi Laksono, a news producer for RCTI television news in Jakarta, said he is here to learn more about how American journalists access information from the government. "Journalists in America can focus on the big picture," he said, "(while) in Indonesia, the government holds all the public information for their own interests."

Ironically, the Indonesian journalists have access to documents at Ohio University that are unavailable in their home country. Alden Library has an extensive Southeast Asian Collection, and the university is designated as a Southeast Asian Studies National Resource Center.

"We use the same paradigm (as American TV journalists): footage first, perspective later," Laksono said. But he agrees with Rogus' assessment that journalists should not amplify conflict through their coverage. "Journalists should have nothing to do with nationality or national identity. Our universal language is humanity."

Laksono will intern at WHIO in Dayton, where he plans to work on stories about gun rights and the 911 emergency response system.

"The people we have here in this group, many of them are getting toward the mid-career professional (stage)," said David Mould, associate dean of the Scripps College. "They're not just journalists themselves, but (they are going) to train younger journalists because to be frank, most universities in these countries are doing a terrible job."

Scripps has stepped forward to train journalists in other nations as well. For example, the Ohio University Institute for Telecommunications Studies is partnering with the National University of Kyiv in Ukraine to develop a multimedia production program. Also funded by the U.S. State Department, the program is developing state-of-the-art production facilities and academic offerings in television, documentary and media production.

"Journalists around the world struggle and sacrifice, even their lives ... to just tell the truth," Rogus said. "I think it inspires us to keep fighting for our freedoms as journalists."

Source: http://www.ohio.edu/outlook/06-07/July/758n-067.cfm

Ohio University to Provide Media Training to Indonesian Broadcasters Through State Department Grant

July, 2007. An Ohio University project funded by a U.S. Department of State grant will facilitate an exchange between Indonesian and American journalists with the goal of raising professional standards in the reporting of issues of cultural and ethnic diversity and conflict by local TV journalists in Indonesia. The $248,000 grant will bring TV journalists from Indonesia to Ohio to study how U.S. media cover conflict and ethnic and cultural diversity in their communities and will allow a group of Ohio TV journalists to travel to Indonesia to learn how their counterparts there report on such issues.

The State Department grant for “people-to-people” educational exchanges will enable Indonesian journalists to learn directly from the experiences of their U.S. colleagues in reporting on issues that divide communities. Ohio University’s Center for Southeast Asia Studies, working with the Center for Research on Inter-Group Conflict and Conflict Management at the University of Indonesia and the leading journalists’ advocacy group, the Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI), will select 18 participants through an open competition designed to ensure balance in gender, region, religion and ethnicity, and between government and non-government TV. The project will begin with a one-week workshop in March 2007 in Jakarta on conflict reporting led by Ohio University journalism professor Mary Rogus. In late June participants will come to Ohio University for a two-week seminar at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, followed by three-week internships at TV stations in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton and Zanesville.

While in the U.S. each Indonesian journalist will produce a feature-length story on cultural and ethnic diversity and conflict resolution. The Indonesian journalists will be engaged in the daily work of their U.S. counterparts including: accompanying reporters and videographers as they cover stories on cultural and ethnic issues and community conflict; observing the coverage of community meetings and forums; attending daily newsroom meetings and meeting with assignment editors and producers; meetings with journalists from other media outlets to discuss how cultural and ethnic issues are covered, and the pressures faced by journalists; and meetings with local government officials and representatives from ethnic associations and community groups.

Six Ohio TV journalists will undertake one-week consultancies at the participants’ stations between September 2007 and March 2008.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country (225 million), has the largest Muslim population in the world. Since the overthrow of President Soeharto in 1998, cultural, religious and ethnic issues have been politicized, and the country has experienced regional and inter-communal conflicts, often with multiple causes. Rival groups have used the media to rally support and occasionally to incite conflict.

The end of authoritarian rule resulted in a media boom, and an increase in the number of regional and local TV and radio stations. TV has become increasingly influential in delivering news and framing issues of cultural and ethnic diversity and conflict. However, many TV journalists lack training or experience, particularly in the reporting of sensitive or potentially divisive issues. Most training efforts have focused on radio and print journalists.

As a US Department of Education designated Title VI National Resource Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Ohio University’s Southeast Asian Studies program provides instruction in language and area studies at the university as well as outreach to students, teachers and residents across the state and beyond. The University has extensive partnerships in Indonesia. In 2000 Ohio University partnered with the University of Indonesia to establish the Center for Research on Inter-group Relations and Conflict Resolution (CERIC) in Depok, Indonesia with support from the Asia Foundation. Ohio University and CERIC were awarded a U.S. Department of State grant to develop training-of-trainer workshops on local-level conflict management, democratic dialogue, tolerance education, and the role of media in reporting on conflict in 2001. Ohio’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies has also facilitated citizen exchanges between Indonesia and the United States through an inter-religious dialogue project funded by the U.S. State Department.

Source: http://www.internationalstudies.ohio.edu/news-events/newsletter/newsbriefs-01.htm