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Dream comes true
Steve Coon's desire to return to Brazil will become a reality through
an international fellowship.
- Steve Coon couldn't believe his luck. He was in the final stages of an
interview process for a Knight International Press Fellowship from the International
Center for Journalists (ICFJ). The ICFJ sends journalists and journalism
educators all over the world to spend several months working with local
journalists.
The group is prominent in Eastern and Central Europe. That's where Coon
thought he would wind up spending nine months of his life.
"That would have been great," the associate professor in the Greenlee
School of Journalism and Communication said. "But I had my heart set
on another location."
More than anything he wanted to go back to Brazil, a country he has visited
several times including conducting a three-week workshop sponsored by the
U.S. Information Agency (USIA). In particular he wanted to go to Manaus,
Brazil, a city of almost two million in the heartland of the country.
That could never happen. Or could it?
"At the end of the interview process, the ICFJ official handed me a
packet and said Ôhere's where we are thinking about sending you,'"
Coon said. "I couldn't believe it. Not only did they want me to go
to Brazil, but also to Manaus. I thought I had died and gone to heaven."
Of course, as everyone who has seen "Field of Dreams" knows, Iowa,
not Brazil is heaven. Still it was the perfect place for the professor who
as an undergraduate had studied Portuguese, the official language of Brazil,
to go.
"I was willing to go anyplace to have an opportunity to work with local
journalists for an extended period of time," Coon said.
For the past 16 years, Coon has traveled throughout the world working with
his fellow journalists. But aside from his Fulbright in Ecuador in 1984,
none of these experiences have lasted more than a few weeks. That's what
motivated him to apply for the Knight Fellowship.
"While working with journalists for a week or two is gratifying, I
never really felt I had stayed long enough to really make a difference,"
he said. "I hope to make a greater long-term impact by staying for
several months.
"When you're at one place with one group for two weeks for an intensive
workshop you can introduce topics, reinforce points, work through any concerns
and come up with an end product," he continued. "You can actually
do something and create something that fits in nicely with their culture
and country. I think we can accomplish so much more in months rather than
weeks or days."
Coon's fellowship in Manaus is actually a follow-up to a earlier Knight
Fellowship awarded to a producer for NBC's "Today" show. Coon,
who has been in contact with the producer, said that was a fact-finding
mission throughout Brazil to see what the ICFJ could do to help Brazilian
journalists.
In particular Coon expects to work with individual radio and television
stations in Manaus. He has been preparing for his extended stay by getting
into a Portuguese language conversation group and listening to a Manaus
on-line radio station.
Around LAS
October 30 to November 5, 2000
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