UNL student selected for Middle East journalism 'boot camp'

University of Nebraska-Lincoln senior news-editorial student Chris Rosacker has been selected to participate in the second annual Middle East Journalism Boot Camp in Egypt and Qatar. The American University in Cairo and Qatar University sponsor the three-week program in June.

This is the second year a UNL journalism student will participate in the program. Graduate student Lisa Munger participated in the first Middle East Journalism Boot Camp in 2008.

Rosacker, a Grand Island native, will be one of 12 American journalism students to be paired with 12 Arab journalism students. The joint U.S.-Arab reporting teams will produce stories for print articles, broadcast pieces or photojournalism packages. The reporting will be drawn from the site visits and briefings.

"The college is pleased to have its students participate in this important international reporting program," said Will Norton Jr., dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. "Now, more than ever, it is vital that our students are prepared to communicate with persons in other cultures to promote understanding and prevent media stereotypes."

The first 10 days of the boot camp will be based at the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research in Cairo, a city that is the historic heart of Arab politics. Students and faculty will travel to Qatar, a rising new power in the Gulf, for 10 days of seminars. A pair of Middle East journalist-scholars -- one American, the other Arab -- will lead the seminars. The goal of the program is to allow students to experience Arab culture to break through stereotypes and report on the region with context and nuance.

The project, jointly funded by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, Qatar University and USAID, provides tuition and the costs for travel and accommodation.

U.S. journalism schools participating in 2008 were all members of the Carnegie-Knight consortium on the future of journalism education. They included Columbia, Syracuse, UNL, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Texas-Austin, Arizona State, California-Berkeley, the Kennedy School at Harvard and Missouri-Columbia.

Munger's "boot camp" blog can be viewed at http://adhamcenter.blogspot.com.