04. 04. 2007

NEW SEEMO BOARD MEMBERS AND MEDIA HANDBOOK 2006/07

.......and other SEEMO activities

Vienna, 4 April 2007

The Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO), a network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in South East Europe and an affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI), would like to announce the results of the elections to the new SEEMO Board.

Among 26 nominated members, the following five SEEMO members were elected to the board: Agron Barjami, editor-in-chief of the daily Koha Ditore, Pristina; Boris Bergant, deputy director of RTV Slovenija, Ljubljana; Pavol Mudry, director of the SITA news agency, Bratislava; Marta Palics, editor of Radio Novi Sad, Novi Sad; and Zrinka Vrabec Mojzes, editor of Radio 101, Zagreb. The new board will also include two previous board members, Radomir Licina, senior editor of the Belgrade daily Danas, and Jorgos Papadakis, journalist from Athens.

SEEMO is also proud to announce that at the beginning of May it will publish the 2006/2007 edition of its annual “South East Europe Media Handbook”. Once again, this handbook will provide important information on the media situation in countries in South East Europe, including media laws and regulations, press freedom violations in 2006, and the contact details of selected media in the region. The new edition will contain over 1,000 pages of information in English. The reports cover: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia (Republic of Macedonia-Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia/Kosovo, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The “South East Europe Media Handbook” will be published in cooperation with the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs and the Central European Initiative.

SEEMO would also like to use this opportunity to announce several conferences it will organise in 2007.

The SEE Media Forum (SEEMF), a new annual regional meeting organised by the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and SEEMO, will be held in Zagreb from 27-28 June. Leading media representatives, as well as persons from the fields of business and politics, will be invited to the forum. This year’s SEEMF will be held under the patronage of Croatian President Stjepan Mesic.

The SEEMO Dialogue Meeting of Editors-in-Chief and Media Executives of Roma and other Minority Media Representatives in South East/Central Europe will be held in Belgrade from 20-22 April. The SEEMO Dialogue Meeting of Representatives of Private News Agencies will be held in Skopje from 31 May-2 June. The SEEMO Investigative Reporting Seminar in Albania will be held in Tirana from 21-23 September. The SEEMO Investigative Reporting Seminar in Romania will take place in Bucharest from 11-13 October. The SEEMO Investigative Reporting Seminar in Bosnia-Herzegovina will be held in Sarajevo from 8-10 November. The SEEMO Investigative Reporting Seminar in Bulgaria will be held in Sofia from 7-9 December. SEEMO will organise the Dialogue and Investigative Reporting meetings together with the Austrian Cooperation with Eastern Europe. As a result of these events in 2007, as well as two meetings of investigative reporters in 2006, SEEMO will publish at the end of the year the “South East Europe Investigative Reporting Handbook”.

Also in 2007, SEEMO will continue to publish its quarterly magazine, De Scripto. The magazine is a joint project between SEEMO and the University of Vienna. The first Number in 2007 will be published at the beginning of April. 

Finally, SEEMO will also present two important awards in 2007: The “Dr. Erhard Busek SEEMO Award 2007” on 19 October and the “SEEMO Human Rights Award 2007” on 10 December.

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SEEMO is a regional network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in South East Europe.

SEEMO - IPI, Spiegelgasse 2/29, 1010 Vienna, Austria, Tel (SEEMO+HELP LINE): +43 1 513 39 40, Tel (SEEMO): +43 1 512 90 11 11, Fax: +43 1 512 90 15, E-mail: info@seemo.org, Web: http://www.seemo.org