Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) has launched its own Journalism Academy, with support from the Eurovision ACADEMY and the EBU Partnership Programme. The GPB Academy is now recruiting young journalists for the first course in May.

Frédéric Frantz, Training Business Manager at the Eurovision ACADEMY, is working with GPB to transform some of its best journalists into skilled trainers.

The new instructors are learning to design a comprehensive, hands-on journalism programme that will complement the theoretical training many of them already have.

Frederic explains the idea behind the project: "Organizing a course with an expert from outside your organization is easy enough to set up. However, creating a structure within a broadcaster not only makes use of your own experts, it nurtures exchanges between different generations of journalists and allows the organization to be independent at a lower cost.

“This new academy will empower GPB, the public it serves and allow it to be more self-sufficient when training."

The next round of training for instructors will be held onsite at GPB in late April. It will host a lecturer from the School of Journalism in Montpellier (ESJ). During this session, GPB trainers will design their courses in journalism.

The new GPB Academy will start its “Master class in multimedia news journalism” in May 2015.

The Eurovision ACADEMY has also supported the creation of similar academies for Bulgarian National Radio and Radio Algeria.