By Amy Simons
and Kevin Wise
Professors, Missouri School of Journalism
Let us be the first to
welcome you to our blog!
In early 2012, a group of students from the
Missouri School of Journalism will spend two weeks in Europe, touring some of the finest capital cities, media outlets and museums. It's a short-term study abroad program designed to expose the students to international systems of journalism.
While abroad, the students will make stops in Prague, Paris, Brussels and Rome. They'll meet with editors, reporters, producers, account executives, educators and religious leaders. They'll learn, firsthand, how their jobs are the same -- and how they're different -- in different cultures.
They'll visit newspapers, magazines, television stations and advertising agencies and observe the influence of the European perspective on journalism in various cultures. They'll see how journalism is consumed in those cultures and about the relationships journalists have with their audiences.
And, they'll have a little bit of fun along the way.
They're journalism students, so you can be sure they'll have a lot to say about what they see and do! Soon enough, this blog will be full of their reflections. We can't wait for them to share their observations, reflections and predictions about the future of journalism here and abroad.
To give you a taste of what's to come, we invite you to read through the observations and reflections from the 2011 class on its blog,
Europe or Bust 2011.
My most highly anticipated media visit scheduled for the Europe Tour was McCann-Erickson in Prague, Czech Republic. My emphasis area is in strategic communications and I can only dream of working for an advertising agency like McCann-Erickson one day. I had been looking forward to this media visit since I read our Europe Tour itinerary. Excitement had been building up inside of me as I imagined everything we would learn about advertising in a different part of the world. Immediately we learned that the McCann-Erickson Prague office consists of six interconnected marketing solutions to benefit its clients, including: McCann Erickson, McCann Digital, Momentum, Universal McCann, Weber-Shandwick, McCann Buzzzer and MRM. Together these components allow McCann Worldgroup Prague to fulfill the visions of its clients through a dynamic brand strategy. However, I soon learned that this dynamic brand strategy is vastly different than what I perceived it to be.
