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October 1998    

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EJTA meeting in Maastricht 
Journalism or PR-writing. That was the big issue when EJTA held it's annual Meeting in Maastricht in June. 
"- It is very important to keep the boarder between PR and journalism clear. And EJTA is an organisation for journalism education, not for PR", says Gunnar Nygren, director of studies in journalism at the University of Stockholm.  
This spring Daimler Benz gave the much discussed suggestion to EJTA: journalism students were given the opportunity to get paid to prepare the "Daimler-Benz Environmental Report 1998". EJTA agreed to the proposal and sent it to its member schools. 
The project was about "company journalism". Everybody agreed about that. But there were different opinions about what "company journalism" really is. Some claimed it was the same thing as PR, some maintained there was a difference between these two conceptions. There were hard discussions in the matter on the meeting in Maastricht. Many were critical on how EJTA handled the matter and wanted a more distinct explanation of the EJTA policy in similar matters. 
The policy group at the Maastricht meeting noted that "there was a big skepticism in the group towards the Daimler Benz project, most speakers thought it was more PR than journalism". 
"Daimler Benz wants to use the good name and reputation of EJTA. It is well known that readers feel more reliability to journalism than to PR", says Gunnar Nygren. 
The annual general meeting decided that EJTA should operate with three categories of projects: 
1. Projects decided by the annual general meeting 
2. Projects initiated by the board within the core activities of EJTA and its members and within the policy laid down by the annual general meeting 
3. Projects proposed by a third part and not falling in under the first two categories are not EJTA-project. 
The annual general meeting also decided that when it comes to the third category EJTA can act like a clearinghouse and give the information on the project to the members, identify interested members and hand it over to them. The contact is just made as a service to the members. But EJTA's label cannot be used in these projects and the contract should be written between the schools and their partner. 
Jonas Elgh