School for journalism and communication students and young journalist

From 15-17 March in 2017, a school for journalism and communication students and young journalist was held. The subject of the school was: Responsible Journalism: LGBTI people and the media. The school consisted of a full-day workshops covering a variety of topics on the model of journalistic reporting on LGBTI people.

On the first day, after Lejla Huremović, as organizer and lecturer, with a few introductory words addressed participants on the work of the Sarajevo Open Center together with the explication of why journalism is essential to working on the questions of the LGBTI community, the school opened an introductory lecture by Professor of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian language Sandra Zlotrg. She covered linguistic analysis of the terms which are commonly used in public discourse about LGBTI people and introduced a question of politically correct speech as something that is necessary for the successful creation of a positive image of LGBTI people. Some of the topics of five other lecturers were: the history of LGBTI movement; different kinds of reports on pride parades, trans* people, intersex people; how to adress the editorial policies and find space for personal engagement; what are the responsibilities of a journalist when reporting on LGBTI subjects, and in the end, why is it so important to report on a variety of LGBTI topics and themes. The attendants had a chance to talk to LGBTI people through a section called Human Library, and to gain real insight to what are the needs and problems. The last day of school the attendants discussed about the article topics that they’re going to write about with Lejla Huremović. Namely, the objective of school is to reconcile the theoretical part with the practical, so they could be able to write articles which are successively going to be published on lgbti.ba.