27.03.2008 // Information and PR Center of Rosenergoatom Concern

Atomprof (St.Petersburg) and Information and PR Center of Rosenergoatom Concern have conducted “Corporate Mass Media” seminar

Exhausting pleasure of work…
Good intellectual kick…
It was a pleasure to come out of my “Podunk” and to work with real professionals…

These are just a few comments made by participants in a skill improvement seminar for editors, correspondents and designers of corporate mass media.

The seminar was organized by Atomprof Institute (St.Petersburg) and the Information and PR Center of Rosenergoatom Concern exclusively for employees of the newspapers of the REA nuclear power plants but it attracted some other newsmakers too. As a result, the newspapers of seven NPPs and five related companies (Tochmash, Mining Chemical Combine, TVEL, Chepetsk Mechanical Plant, Siberian Chemical Combine) attended the training.

The participants were divided into two editorial staffs with editors, correspondents and secretaries, which produced two newspapers written and designed on the basis of the knowledge received during the seminar – it was a kind of exam, competence test.

Theoretical knowledge was not the key point of the seminar. Journalism is practical activity. So, the trainees were taught how to write and review specific articles, how to organize the work of an editor’s office, how to prepare questions for an interview, how to make headlines.

In five days the trainees received theoretical and practical knowledge of the “ten commandments” of newspaper making. The organizers hope that the results of the seminar will be seen very soon.

In a 20,000 town getting just 500 copies of central and regional newspapers, corporate newspapers play a big role: in fact, they are the only source of information. At the same time, the present conditions of corporate newspapers do not allow them to be competitive. It was the key topic of the second meeting of the Rosenergoatom Council of Editors held in the framework of the seminar.

The head of the PR and Mass Media Department of Atomenergoprom and the head of the Information and PR Center of Rosenergoatom Concern Ashot Nasibov took part in the meeting.

The Council decided to enlarge its membership by admitting representatives of Atomenergoprom, to ask the management of Rosenergoatom Concern to provide the editors of the corporate newspapers with licensed makeup programs, to prepare proposals for developing “correct” universal editorship standards.

Professional designers from big St.Petersburg newspapers showed the trainees how to design newspapers and how to be free within rigid stylistic frames. The two groups edited each other’s newspapers and learned from each other’s mistakes.  

Three days after the seminar, we saw specific results: the first renovated issue of Smolensky Atom newspaper (Smolensk NPP). It was good evidence that the seminar was not in vain.