Journalism awards

Thursday, September 28, 2006
My MaltaMedia blog is a finalist for the 16th edition of the Malta Journalism Awards in two categories: Cultural Journalism and E-Journalism. The finalists were announced last night at Villa Parisio, home of the Strickland Foundation in Lija. In the Cultural Journalism category I am competing with Lino Bugeja of The Sunday Times and Alvin Scicluna of TVM. My fellow finalists in the E-Journalism category are Domenic Aquilina of UEFA.com and Mona Farrugia for planetmona.com. Martin Debattista, MaltaMedia's Editor-in-Chief, is also a finalist for the Print Features category of these awards organised by The Malta Institute of Journalists via his work for The Times of Malta. Maltamedia won the E-journalism awards in 2003 and 2005.

 

Current trends in journalism

Monday, September 18, 2006
My media notebook in today's Maltastar is dedicated to a seminar dealing with current trends in journalism that I am presently attending. The 1st Euro Med Journalism Institute, with participants from 25 countries in the region, is convened by the Greek Association for Atlantic & European Co-operation and the Fund for American Studies and was launched today in Andros, an island of the Greek archipelago, the most northerly of the Cyclades. Andros is half the size of Malta with a population of around 5000.

The seminar leader is Professor Rachel Yould, the editor- in-chief of the Oxford International Review, an influential publication run by scholars based at Oxford University. She is the author of “Beyond the American Fortress: Understanding Homeland Security in the Information Age” and, as a journalist, covered conflicts in Asia for USA Today and San Francisco Chronicle.

 

Guest blogging by Sabine Cassar-Alpert

Friday, September 08, 2006
German author Sabine Cassar-Alpert is guest blogging on my MaltaMedia blog till Sunday. Sabine is the author of the recently published novel Angelina's Ghost. She was born in Berlin and moved permanently to Gozo in 1984. Enjoy the perspectives of life in the Maltese islands as seen by a writer who is 'simply not made for the metropolitan life'.

 

Catching Up

Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The appointment of the first ever female judges is welcome news even if overdue. Judge Abigail Lofaro and Judge Anna Felice, both still in their forties, were sworn in yesterday evening at the Palace following years of lobbying by the Council of Women:

The National Council of Women has expressed satisfaction at the nomination of the two women judges. It said it has for many years made recommendations regarding the need of appointing women to the judiciary.

During the ceremony , the President of the Republic chose to link the event with the development of democracy in Malta:

Speaking at the end of the ceremony, President Fenech Adami said that the nomination of the two female judges shows the democratic lines upon which Malta is built.

In that case, the more significant aspect of their nomination is the worrying fact that the Maltese Government was unable to do so before yesterday making Malta the last EU member state to appoint female members at senior levels of the Judiciary. My guess is that there may be other areas in the democratic workings of this country that require a degree of catching up with European norms.

 

European Youth Forum

Tuesday, September 05, 2006
This past weekend I was meant to attend an event at The Wild Geese in Brussels to celebrate the tenth anniversary of The European Youth Forum, an organisation that was an important part of my political formation in the nineties. All the former board members were invited to get together and look back on the successes and disappointments of the first years of the platform that remains a respected consultative body for the European Commission and The Council of Europe on matters such as youth policy, education and employment. Being nominated by the EYF as an adviser to the Finnish EU Presidency Delegation at the UN General Assembly in 1999 was one of the highlights of my term of office. Unfortunately this time I could only be at The Wild Geese - the EYF meeting place after office hours - in spirit due to more pressing engagements here.

 

The business of language

Saturday, September 02, 2006
A report on the EU's annual interpretation budget that will be published in a few days states that 16%, or 26 million Euro, was wasted on staff who are booked for meetings to find they are not needed. According to the author of the report, Finnish MEP Alex Stubb, the greatest offenders are MEPs who demand an interpreter for a committee meeting which they then miss:

"A lot of money is wasted. My report should serve as a wake-up call for MEPs who just request an interpreter as a point of principle and then don't show up. They are a small minority, but the rest of us could be more careful."


Mr Stubb is right to call for better planning of translation and interpretation but I disagree with his assertion that language is unrelated to a nation's identity:

"Language is [about] communication and not identity. But for many MEPs it is a question of identity and culture. Therefore we have to be very sensitive."


The Maltese language is a central pillar of the nation's identity and the official status of the Maltese language within European institutions is a positive development even though the Maltese authorities had originally hesitated about putting forward such a request to the EU in the nineties.

 

Waiting for Godot

Friday, September 01, 2006
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot performed by Peter Busuttil's Fabbrika Fantastika was a remarkable Maltese adaptation of the play that has influenced generations of playwrights. Pino Scicluna who played Vladimir was in a class of his own. Samuel Beckett, born hundred years ago, was so impressed by Caravaggio’s The Beheading of St John the Baptist which he viewed while on holiday in Malta, he wrote one act play Not I to celebrate it.

De Redin Bastions, just beneath the Mdina Cathedral, was a spectacular venue for the performance. It was transformed 'from jungle to theatre' by the organisers since the location had not been used since Lysistrata by Aristophanes was staged in the early nineties by Joe Friggieri. The theme of that Greek play - featuring women who withold sex from their husbands to force them to secure peace and end the Peloponnesian War - was considered too hot for the Maltese church authorities. They subsequently denied any further use of the location for theatrical performance during all these years.

It was a long wait but thanks to the efforts by Peter and Pino, the place will hopefully be established once again as a venue for cultural events. It will shortly be hosting an evening of opera and song.