The first World Journalism Education Congress will be held from the 25-28 June in Singapore and will be hosted by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.

This unprecedented event will be organized in collaboration with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and all the leading journalism education associations from around the world.

The three-day conference, which will be open to journalism educators and students, will feature six plenary sessions during the mornings. Some of the topics that have been identified are as follows:

• State of the Field – Journalism Education (focusing primarily on the State of Journalism Education Report and Declaration of Universal Principles generated by the participating journalism education associations);
• Industry/Academy Relationship;
• Journalistic Freedom and Responsibility;
• Who is a Journalist? (This is a topical session whose content could change according to major issues of the day);
• Comparative Models of Journalism Education;
• Asian Journalism Education – Challenges and Opportunities (this will be a joint AMIC/AEJMC session).

In the afternoons, there would be three ongoing strands in the form of parallel sessions – Pedagogy Forum, Research Trends and Critical Professional Issues. Each strand would present six panels over three days. In addition, there would be one-day strands for each of the following specialized audiences: journal editors, administrators and students.

The leaders of journalism education associations will hold a one-day session on the 26th of June 2007 to discuss key issues and trends in the journalism education field. The AMIC Annual Conference will be held from the 25-27 June 2007 with June 27 being an overlap day between the AMIC and WJEC conferences.

The June 26, 2007 meeting of journalism education associations will have four primary goals:

• Issue a State of Journalism Education Report that provides an overview of the field globally and a census of journalism education programmes;
• Issue a Declaration of Universal Principles for Journalism Education to raise the stature of our field in the eyes of external audiences and to state the principles that we hold dear;
• Release a Report on Key Competencies and Learning Outcomes for Journalism Education to promote a dialogue among journalism educators;
• Develop a system for networking journalism education associations and for promoting an ongoing dialogue among them.

Organized by

Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), Singapore

&

Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore