Podgorica 20 May – Experts and managers from Slovenian Public Broadcaster held a one day in-house training for the journalist of Multimedia Centre (MMC) of Montenegrin Public Broadcaster, RTCG. Training was focused on digital technology, websites presentation of public broadcasters and social networks strategy.

Before the training started, Slovenian trainers, Katarina Jakupic and Luka Zebec met with the Director General of Montenegrin Public Broadcaster, Adrija Kadija, along with EU Delegation representative, Patrick Schmelzer and EUIC representatives. Kadija thanked the EU Delegation, the EUIC and RTV Slovenia for the opportunity to learn from Slovenian experience and said that they will try to implement all good practices that will be shown through the training. Meeting was opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities that lie before public broadcaster in the region. It was said that although the public broadcasters of two countries are different in size, challenges are very similar: lack of funds, integrating newsrooms, disloyal competition.

At the beginning of the training Jakupic and Zebec, explained the structure of RTV Slovenia and their MMC. RTV Slovenia, contrary to RTCG didn’t structurally separate from Broadcasting Centre (RDC) which now creates steady stream of income by renting infrastructure for mobile companies. Slovenian Public Broadcaster MMC is one of the most read web portals in the country and in that regard one of the best web representation of public broadcaster in Europe. They have 60 stuff out of which 30 journalists and get 2 percent of RTV Slovenia budget per year, which amounts to 2 million euros. Compared to Montenegrin MMC it is 5 to 6 times larger, but some of the experience proved to be similar.

Jakupic and Zebec, who are managers of Slovenian MMC, explained to Montenegrin colleagues how they operate on a daily basis and what are the innovative formats that proved to be successful. They showed structure of MMC, that includes web streaming, specialized sites, thematic pages, second screens. The special attention was paid to proofreading, moderation of comments, counting of views and similar activities where experiences were exchanged. Montenegrin MMC, although it started rather late compared to the Slovenian counterpart, showed technological improvements and was awarded because they first implemented responsive web design.

The shared goal of both MMC is to involve more journalists from radio and television to work with them and to create functional integrated newsroom, which is a difficult and long process.

Training was organised by EU Info Centre in Podgorica as part of activities aimed at improving quality of local media and journalists.