The NPF Newsbag

The World According to a Front Page

Pick a city anywhere in the world and get a snapshot of the day’s leading news told from a local perspective. The Newseum’s website offers a look at over 800 front pages from 71 countries, all in their original, unedited form. The method is simple: every morning, newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum online. View the day’s top ten front pages, browse by region, and immerse yourself in global news.

You may even come across work by our J2J international fellows! Look out for more info about our upcoming J2J HIV/AIDS Media Training in Vienna, including 60 fellows from 41 countries.

Inspiring a 'Second Generation'

March 31-- Nigerian journalist Sylvia Nzurumike has capitalized – literally – on the NPF fellowship that brought her to South Africa last summer to learn about reporting on HIV/AIDS. One of 55 journalists in our J2J HIV/AIDS Media Training, held in conjunction with the 5th IAS Conference on Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, Sylvia used her fellowship as the starting point for a journey that would include training dozens of other journalists, and creation of a radio program about prevention and treatment of the virus, which kills 170,000 in Nigeria each year.

Who Will Be Next?

At last year's AIDS conference in Mexico City we had a fellow from Pakistan whose leg had been blown off by an IED when he was a child. As sweet a person as you could imagine, and not bitter at all. At a recent international health meeting I shared a cab with a physician, also from Pakistan, whose colleague a fews years ago had made a remark about medicine that enraged the Taliban. He was assassinated.  Journalists too are not immune, as the Committee to Protect Journalists  documents. I  think of them all as I read and watch the deterioration of that country.

bob meyers

More Coverage from Sydney

Here are a few more links to stories and resources generated by IAS 2007:

Edner Boucicaut of Haiti sent us these articles which appeared in Le Nouvelliste.

• CECOSIDA à la 4e Conférence de l'International Aids Society (IAS) en Australie
• Ouverture de la 4e Conférence de l'International Aids Society à Sydney
• Haïti sur la route du Professeur Michel Kazatchkine
• La circoncision : de la recherche à la pratique

 

Kaisernetwork.org from the Kaiser Family Foundation has great in-depth coverage of IAS 2007. From their homepage:

In partnership with the International AIDS Society, kaisernetwork.org is pleased to be the official webcaster of the 4th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, providing access to daily conference developments.

Just to clarify, NPF did not work with Kaisernetwork.org during our J2J training program or the IAS 2007 Conference.

Stories from Sydney

As one would expect, the IAS 2007 Conference has been generating news stories around the globe. Our Journalist to Journalist program prepared our fellows to cover the many topics discussed at the conference and gave them an edge in finding and interviewing sources. Here's a sampling of the work they've produced so far. More will be posted as soon as we get them. 

Kenny Goldberg of KBPS Radio in San Diego, California produced this piece from sources he met both at the IAS Conference and the J2J Seminar.

• Global AIDS Conference Shares Cutting-Edge Research, Prevention

Dr. Tareq Salahuddin of The Daily Star in Bangladesh wrote these stories:

• Global initiative to combat spread of HIV among MSM
• Modern technology and ancient surgery battle AIDS

Christina Scott of South Africa blogged the J2J program and the IAS 2007 Conference for SciDev.net. She also coordinated and edited contributions from several of our fellows including:

• Imelda Abano of the Philippines
  • Men Who Have Sex with Men
• Esther Nakkazi of Uganda
  • Lose that Foreskin
  • Science Journalists and Circumcision
  • Sending out a MSM SMS
• Ansbert Ngurumo of Tanzinia:
  • Research and Evaluation in the Developing World
  • Testing Times
  • But Wait, Another Circumcision Story
• T V Padma of India

We need a nap...

After two long weeks here in Australia, most of the staff is taking time off for some much needed R&R. Regular updates to the blog will resume on August 6. You can look forward to a reading list of stories produced by our J2J fellows and links to their blogs and personal web pages when I return. But if you can't get enough NPF news, visit www.nationalpress.org and pay special attention to our upcoming program for American journalists on Retirement Issues in the 21st Century.

~ Phil Javellana

Wrapping up in Sydney

The National Press Foundation's Journalist to Journalist program is in Sydney, Australia at the 4th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention. We have brought 44 journalists from 30 countries here (bios here). We will post articles, blogs and other resources from the 4-day J2J program and then the 4-day IAS program below.

The J2J program and the IAS Conference are over and our time in Sydney has come to an end. Below, Bob Meyers, president of the National Press Foundation, reflects on our experiences and the lessons learned in the last two weeks.

The laptops have been closed, the notebooks flipped shut, pens and papers put away, clinical reports, brochures and scientific papers shipped back to 30 countries by our 44 journalists. The 4th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention ended on July 25, and with it J2J’s fourth involvement with a major AIDS program.

Along the way we experienced the coldest days in two decades in Australia (see Jamaican Andrea Downer’s funny blog on the Big Chill elsewhere on these pages); a boat tour of Sydney Harbour in which you didn’t have to worry about the beer being cold enough; direct discussions with scientists, researchers, people living with HIV/AIDS and sex workers; got a tour of a health clinic in downtown Sydney and developed good friendships with reporters, editors and broadcasters from around the world. You can see the full agenda HERE.

We worked on a great classroom discussion called, “Avoiding AIDS Fatigue,” in which we all had to come up with a headline that let us do an AIDS story without using the words AIDS. My favorite – “Margaret Mead was Wrong,” which had something to do with “dusky beauties” and the South Sea Islands. We’re going to post all of these ideas on the website.

More after the jump

The Quest for an AIDS Vaccine

The National Press Foundation's Journalist to Journalist program is in Sydney, Australia at the 4th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention. We have brought 44 journalists from 30 countries here (bios here). We will post articles, blogs and other resources from the 4-day J2J program and then the 4-day IAS program below.

The development of an AIDS vaccine is the "Holy Grail" in AIDS research. To talk about where we are on that quest, Simon Noble (pictured above) of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the VAX Report gave this presentation.

For more on AIDS Vaccines, visit the IAVI website.

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"Immunology 101" and "T-cell loss, immune activation and potential therapeutic interventions"

The National Press Foundation's Journalist to Journalist program is in Sydney, Australia at the 4th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention. We have brought 44 journalists from 30 countries here (bios here). We will post articles, blogs and other resources from the 4-day J2J program and then the 4-day IAS program below.

To prepare the J2J fellows for the IAS plenary discussion on potential therapeutic interventions, we brought in Dr. Tony Kelleher (pictured above), clinical immunologist and senior lecturer in medicine at the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research in Sydney. He gave the journalists a crash course in immunology and answered questions they had on the subject as it relates to HIV/AIDS. Visit to the IAS website to see the video from that plenary.

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Plenary Preview: Paediatric Therapeutic Issues

The National Press Foundation's Journalist to Journalist program is in Sydney, Australia at the 4th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention. We have brought 44 journalists from 30 countries here (bios here). We will post articles, blogs and other resources from the 4-day J2J program and then the 4-day IAS program below.

Today's IAS plenary was entitled "Getting Ahead of the Curve: Current Issues in Paediatric Treatment, Virology and Biomedical Prevention Science." To prepare the J2J fellows, we had Dr. John Ziegler, head of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and of the HIV Service at Sydney Children's Hospital, speak about issues surrounding children and HIV. His slide show is available here.

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