Cambodian radio deejay/producer Bunchhoeurn Keo (center) talks with Western Kentucky University journalism professor Paula Quinn following an opening reception Monday morning at the schools Academic Complex. Radio managers and producers from Cambodia are visiting Western for two weeks of training with various university organizations. Photo by Clinton Lewis

Nine radio station managers from Cambodia are learning from faculty and staff at Western Kentucky University for the next two weeks. The International Journalism and Media Management Training Program provides media professionals from around the world the opportunity to work with faculty and staff at Western. The program is a partnership between Western and Internews Network, an international, non-profit organization that supports open media worldwide and is responsible for training 16,000 journalists in emerging democracies in the past decade. George Papagiannis, director of radio operations and training for Internews, said the program fits in perfectly with Internews. Our mission is to promote open and independent media, Papagiannis said. Jerry Barnaby, director of Public Broadcasting and Educational Telecommunications at Western, said the program brings together resources from Internews and Western. Internews has international contacts and Western has training facilities and faculty to train the participants. The participants are working with 14 trainers from Westerns Public Broadcasting, School of Journalism and Broadcasting and Gordon Ford College of Business. The participants will learn about marketing, programing and ethics in the radio industry. Internews had no contacts in Cambodia, which made getting these managers together a little more difficult. Everything started very much from scratch, Barnaby said. Cambodia fit into the program well, too, Papagiannis said. Cambodia is a country that has been in transition for a number of years, Papagiannis said. Democracy is still in its infancy there. Managers applied to be in the program, which is open to independent, non-government owned stations with a commitment to news, Barnaby said. He said they wanted to get an equal balance of men and women. One of the differences between this program and others is that everything is translated for the participants. Language barriers often keep people from participating in training programs. The barriers can also keep instructors from working with people. Since we translate everything, we know we can get good instructors, Barnaby said. The participants are paired off with hosts from Bowling Green who take them out and show them how people live in Bowling Green. It really creates a strong bond, Barnaby said. Thats the idea, to show them how we live here. We get to know them and they get to know us. Barnaby said the weather should allow the managers to see more of Bowling Green. Spring is a good time to be here, Barnaby said. Sokhoeun Khuy, one of the two translators with the group, said this program should really help the managers. They havent gotten very specific training to do their jobs, Khuy said. Khuy said one of the main points is learning to generate more revenue to sustain the stations. If they cant sustain themselves, its all for naught, Papagiannis said. That is key. Barnaby said the managers will learn how to make their station viable and how to establish a news program to do that. The managers will also learn more about what radio stations do in a democracy. I hope this program will be very helpful for the stations that are seen as lackeys for the government, Khuy said. This is a great opportunity for them to see what the free world is really like. Radio journalists from Cambodia will come to Western in May as the second part of this project and someone will travel to Cambodia sometime after that to see how training has helped the journalists who participated.