Observer Hosts a Weekend Workshop with Alumni Journalists
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SELIM KORU
FACULTY EXPERTS SECTION EDITOR
Alumni Julia Damianova (MIPP, 2012) and Pablo Pardo (MA, 2006) held a two-day journalism workshop for the SAIS Observer’s staff this weekend. The event was intended to sharpen participants’ journalistic skills and answer their questions regarding careers.
Damianova primarily works for Austrian daily newspaper Kurier as a US correspondent and for Bulgarian weekly newspaper Capital Weekly. Pardo is a Washington correspondent for Spanish newspaper El Mundo and writes mostly on finance and economics. The two alumni together brought more than two decades of journalism experience to the table.
Saturday began with a 25-minute writing exercise in which each participant had to type out an article from assigned press releases. The group then critiqued the articles at length and discussed various journalistic styles. Takuya Matsuda, a first-year and the only non-Observer staffer to attend the session said the exercise gave him an “opportunity to see [his] writing objectively.”
On Sunday, the workshop met in the morning to have croissants and coffee in the Nitze courtyard. What was supposed to be a mock interview session turned into a leisurely three-hour brunch in which the group discussed anything ranging from how to quote sources effectively to a journalists’ work-life balance.
