Last week I attended a focus group session for the university newspaper about the English page. They were thinking of translating more articles from the Dutch section and putting them online and/or making more space in the paper for English content. The question was: what sort of articles do you want to read?
After doing a short course on scientific journalism late last year, I’m quite interested in finding out more about how newspapers/journalism works. Because of this, I was keen to attend.
But on the other hand, I don’t read the uni paper much any more, so I wasn’t quite sure what I could contribute. I find the English page not so relevant any more and I read the feeds online from the Dutch section. On top of this, none of my colleagues read it, so even if I do read the paper, I have no-one to interact with about it. However, there was another participant who said all of his international colleagues read the Cursor English page every week, and sometimes they discuss it. I really miss discussing articles from The Age (or even the Herald-Sun) during lunch.
In terms of interaction, another development that was discussed was the use of the new TU/e social networking site. I joined this a while back, but there’s only a few people there at the moment. It might take some more time to pick up pace. However, there is now a forum where members can discuss the stories on the English page. So far, no comments though.
We also had a look at some recent English pages from other Dutch unis. There were several different layouts: some had a single feature article with some smaller summary articles, and some were similar to Cursor with several short articles. One page even had an advice column (the anonymously-sent question was “How should I address my professor?”) which was a nice idea.
I think the misconception is that the English page is only for the international staff/students and therefore should only be about international staff/students. This is another example of how the international community is being disadvantaged. DutchNews and Expatica don’t make the assumption that their audience is only interested in expat news. I would like to read about the uni, what’s happening, who the important people are, what does the rector do, etc.
So after my initial hesitation, it was worthwhile (even though I was described as “annoyed” in the accompanying article and I look grumpy as anything in the photo). I’m pleased to see that steps are being taken to increase the amount of English news and communication. In last week’s issue there was already more English content with the front page story about the now English language academic year opening ceremony appearing in both Dutch and English, which was doubly good (for being in both languages and for the news itself). Hopefully we’ll have a follow-up session at some stage.
