2023-10-04 17:09:56
My first approach to the José Martí International Institute of Journalism, in Havana, was fortuitous and quick. At the beginning of December 2007, with only a few months of graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism at the Universidad Central Marta Abreu de Las Villas, my director at the Perlavisión Telecenter, in Cienfuegos, sent me there to take the National Diploma in Digital Journalism.
It is true that during my fifth year of college I had passed by the Institute, on my way to the Faculty of Journalism, which at that time was located across the street, but I had never imagined the bond I would forge with that institution and its workers.
It was five months of learning a lot about digital communication, but above all of putting into practice the fresh knowledge that I brought from the University and adding other knowledge contributed by colleagues from almost all over the country.
It was a joy to sit in the classrooms and, over the years, listen to great professors in the Trends in Contemporary Journalism courses; Journalism and Tourism and Communication for Development. But it was more pleasant to prepare to be in front of those same classrooms to share my knowledge in the Cibermambí Advanced Digital Journalism Workshop, in Reorientation to Journalism or Digital Journalism diplomas. These were organized by the Institute, but taught in Cienfuegos, for my journalist colleagues and other communicators.
In a “distant” year of 2017, the director of the Institute, Ariel Terrero, for me a figure of great respect, invited me to a Communication for Development Colloquium and I went in the dual capacity of student and teacher. In those days, sitting in his office, he encouraged me to prepare a completely new course, on mobile journalism topics, something that he had presented in my media outlet a year before in a simple Power Point.
In a few months, these ideas germinated quickly and in April or May 2018 the first call for the National Mobile Journalism Workshop was made. That door opened others for me, such as the Postgraduate Data Journalism Course, the SEO Web Positioning Course, the Podcast Course, and the Hypermedia Journalism Course.
As the years went by, those classrooms, previously strange to me, became my own. Now they greet me from the cook to the drivers.
Also over time something curious and pleasant happened, which fills me with healthy pride. Those teachers that I had before, Roger Ricardo, Dixie Edith, Iraida Calzadilla, the director Ariel Terrero himself, today we sat together to talk about the students, the courses, the vicissitudes of putting together a course so that the majority or to change dates for better times.
I can’t forget a course where I had enormous pain. One day I saw teacher Iraida Calzadilla in the classroom and I thought that she came to say hello or talk about the National Time.news Event, that event that she liked so much in Cienfuegos. But not. I was wrong, I came to take one of my courses, to learn about my subject, she said. My colors rose and I spent a week in the classroom thinking about each word several times, so as not to make mistakes in front of a professional that I consider as an example and that I had as a student that week.
The José Martí International Institute of Journalism, its classrooms and its courses led me to think more about the way we do journalism in Cuba, about its difficulties, about how to take advantage of what we have and exploit it to the fullest.
From the ideas of my courses came my topic for the Doctorate in Communication Sciences and ideas for my book Cuban Manual of Mobile Journalism, edited by Editorial Pablo de la Torriente, but greatly promoted by the director Ariel Terrero and converted into a mandatory bibliography of my courses.
Today I am greeted by students from all over Cuba who have passed through those classrooms. Sometimes I don’t remember their names or their faces, but they tell me: “Teacher, I gave you a report on that topic in my final test,” and then I remember them. And I remember that year 2007 when I arrived for the first time with my backpack on my shoulder from Cienfuegos and my head full of ideas planted at the University, but that finally germinated there, with the daily analysis of how to do better journalism in Cuba.
#Institute #Cubaperiodistas