Sofia, 11 April 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra, edited machine translation)

The Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria (a member of the International Association of European Journalists www.aej.org) is inviting journalists and journalism students to a seminar on practical skills to access information. The seminar will be opened with a talk by lawyer Alexander Kashumov of Foundation Programme Access to Information and courtesy of the European Commission Representation in Bulgaria.

The training will include practical guidelines for working with databases in journalistic investigations on various topics.

The use of databases as a source of interesting stories for journalism is one of the latest trends in global media. An interesting site offering opportunities is the European statistical office Eurostat, based upon which journalists themselves can create graphs and maps to illustrate their articles related to demographic, economic and other issues at European level. Learning how to use those tools with Eurostat is the aim of a session by Christina Christova, head of media Evropa.Dnevnik.

Practical guidelines for working with databases on EU legislation and information on legal persons exercising an economic activity, will give Boycho Georgiev, director of legal information systems to Ciela Publishing.

The seminar will be held in the Info Centre of the European Commission (Moskovska "№ 9, Sofia) on May 4 from 15.30 to 17.30 Attendance is free but as places are limited, registration is required.

To participate in the seminar, please send a short motivation for your application to:

team@aej-bulgaria.org or Christina Christova: kristinas@dnevnik.bg

Program of the seminar

1. Basic principles for work related to access to public information. Interesting case studies.

Speaker: lawyer Alexander Kashumov Foundation Programme Access to Information.

1. Working with the database of the European statistical office Eurostat - tools for creating and using maps and graphics on the Eurostat website.

Speaker: Christina Christova, Head Evropa.Dnevnik, http://evropa.dnevnik.bg .

1. Working with databases of legal information: Ciela tools for European legislation, information on persons engaged in business and Bulgarian legislation in English.

Speaker: Boycho Georgiev, director of legal information systems, Ciela