The first time US editor Jim Amoss wanted to fly to Germany as part of the program for German and American journalists was in 2005. However, Hurricane Katrina thwarted the plans of the editor-in-chief of the New Orleans daily newspaper The Times Picayune. So the editor simply adopted the role of correspondent: “I just got connected and reported to my colleagues in Germany,” Amoss recalls. Two years later, nothing got in the way of the flight across the Atlantic. Since 2007 Amoss has been taking part in the annual information and encounter tour designed to promote a continuous exchange of views between German and American journalists.
The tours, organized by the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Center for Transatlantic Relations of the Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., are aimed at editors of well-known regional newspapers in both countries. They get to meet not only their journalist colleagues, but also experts from the fields of politics, business and administration. The program was inaugurated in 2005; one year the Americans come to Germany, the next year the Germans go to the US. The Foundation’s aim in facilitating this close exchange is to create greater understanding for German and American themes and to strengthen the transatlantic partnership.
Apart from global politics, the journalists are also very interested in meeting other editors. Jim Amoss appreciates the opportunity for conversations with German journalists irrespective of their everyday work situation, mainly because of the very different experiences they have had in the newspaper industry. It is important to hear how “others perceive the world” and to shake off the isolationism of local reporting. Because Amoss has met some of these colleagues several times, the contacts are quite close, he says. Many editors arrange to make mutual visits to the newspaper offices above and beyond the official tours. Jim Amoss, for example, visited a colleague at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and took a look at the everyday work situation there.
The program participants receive their invitations from the program organizers – in the selection process the Robert Bosch Foundation works closely with the editors-in-chief of the different newspapers. Over the past years, German journalists from the Tagesspiegel in Berlin, the Westdeutsche Zeitung and the Leipziger Volkszeitung have taken part, while the American journalists have come from the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Miami Herald. All in all, ten Germans and ten Americans.
The German journalists visited Washington and Chicago in April 2009 – not so long after Barack Obama was elected President, which was an extremely interesting moment in time. They had discussions with representatives from the White House and Congress, experts from various think-tanks, with civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, with senators and with people from the Obama inner circle. Their main theme: the new American policies. By contrast, during the recent tour to Germany in 2008 the main issues were related to security policy. In the past years, demographic developments in the western world, education and migration have also been important topics.
By concentrating on journalists from regional newspapers, the aim of the Bosch Foundation has been to improve the quality of foreign affairs reporting, given the fact that the portion of international news in the regional media is constantly shrinking, says Sandra Breka, head of the Berlin office of the Robert Bosch Foundation. This, she points out, is to the disadvantage of the readers, as many citizens receive their information on foreign policy topics from regional newspapers. Currently, however, the Foundation is debating whether the focus should remain on regional newspapers. After all, journalists in all sectors of the media are very interested in the tours – so in future the program will possibly be extended to other media as well.
