Scholarships and Training Program for Journalists at the Counter Academy for Arab Journalism 2021

The Counter Academy for Arab Journalism invites Arab journalists to submit their applications to participate in the 2021 academy program. Journalists will spend a whole year reading, discussing, writing, working in journalistic institutions, engaging with many axioms in our Arab context, and training in questioning, investigation, and research, and discussing the relationship of journalism with history And location and social, cultural and economic accumulations.

The Academy offers an alternative to training programs that deal with journalism in a purely practical and technical manner, and reduce it to production applications and programs, and an alternative to traditional education that deals with journalism in a purely academic and theoretical manner, and leads to its practice in a rigid and non-critical way.

The program takes a full year, starting with an introductory camp, followed by a distance learning period through a dedicated platform, then another camp, followed by a training period in the press institutions based on the February Consortium, the network of independent Arab media organizations registered in Berlin.

Program Overview:

Academy camps are an essential part of the learning process in the program. The camps include lectures, workshops, activities, and discussions, and require preparation for them through readings that the academy sends in advance.

The first camp will be held in December, and the second camp is in October.

The program covers four tracks, each of which falls under a number of courses that participants must complete in full before graduating from the Academy.

• First Track: The course of history, engagement with the current journalistic legacy, and understanding of the region’s history through its media and journalism.
• Second Track: The installation and dismantling path, which is a practical path that continues throughout the year, during which journalists will learn about different journalistic writing styles and produce journalistic topics by working with editors.
• Third Track: Engaging with Tools, the Academy employs social science, creative writing, and feminist studies to refine journalists' lens and questions to practice more in-depth journalism, fairness, value, and contextual awareness.
• Fourth Track: During this track, journalists will apply what has been achieved during the academic year by working on graduation projects and move to train in one of the press institutions of the February Network.

There is no participation fee in the academy, and the academy allocates a nominal amount as a full-time allowance that can be applied for by those whose work will be affected because of the study. To apply for the grant, please fill out the following form.

• Proficiency in expression and writing in the Arabic language.
• The participant must be at least 23 years old and not more than 40.
• Commitment to allocating the required time for the academy, equivalent to approximately 20 hours per week, which includes about 3 hours of communication per week, two hours for recorded lectures, in addition to in-depth and complex readings, conducting interviews, visits, field research, and investigation, and writing articles and research papers.
• Allocating two days per week to train at a press institution from October to December 2022.

Note: Participating in discussions and completing the required readings and texts is a prerequisite for continuing with the Academy, and the coaches will evaluate each fellow on a periodic basis.

Selection Criteria:

The Academy will review all the applications and search for:

• The depth of the answers, and the ability of the participant to analyze, criticize and think creatively.
• Participants' interests concerning public affairs and following it up.
• Experience in the fields of expression and knowledge production: journalism/writing/research/academia and the desire to pass through this experience into a journalistic work and project.
• Willingness, according to the program, to engage in journalistic work in its field form, which requires research, investigation, and interviews.
• Desire to investigate.
• Follow the news and pay attention to its intersections with daily life.
• Readiness and willingness to read texts and articles from different fields, such as journalism, literature, culture, history, human and social sciences, with varying degrees of structure and theory.

About the Counter Academy:

The Counter Academy for Arab Journalism is a one-year fellowship program that encourages creativity and critical thinking. The Academy provides an alternative to training programs that deal with the press in a practical and purely technical way, and reduces it to applications and production programs, and considers recipients as numbers and views and button clicks on the screens. The Academy also offers an alternative to traditional education, which deals with the media in a purely academic and theoretical way, and performs it in a rigid and non-critical manner, or makes it serve authority and regulations in general, rather than questioning them. 

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