SGS President and CEO Stephen Salyer gave a lecture on Monday, August 6 entitled “Making Change: Tools for the Media Entrepreneur” as part of the final week of the sixth annual Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change.

Drawing on his own long experience in public radio production and management in the USA as well as the media-related initiatives he has launched at Salzburg Global Seminar since joining the organization in 2005, Salyer emphasized the importance of not only having a good business plan, but also of mastering the art of storytelling.

Using the example of Roshan Paul, founder of the Amani Institute, a non-profit focussed on professional development and training for graduate students, Salyer explained that storytelling is a “leadership art through which we translate values into action,” aimed at persuading potential investors to support businesses, initiatives and causes through sharing “authentic” stories about the personal motivation behind such projects.

“People need to understand us with their heart as well as their heads,” Salyer’s presentation told students.

Salyer’s presentation was one of many given to students as part of the three-week long Academy, held at Schloss Leopoldskron. The 68 media and journalism students from 13 different universities on five continents spent three weeks studying media literacy, primarily led by Paul Mihailidis, Salzburg Academy Program Director and Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Marketing Communication at Emerson College, and Jad Melki, coordinator of the Media Studies Program and assistant professor of journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut, with additional lectures from:

• Roman Gerodimos, Senior Lecturer in Global Current Affairs in the Media School at Bournemouth University, UK, on “The Age of Engagement: Empowering Citizens in the Global Public Sphere”
• Christy Pipkin, Executive Director of The Nobelity Project on documentary filmmaking and social change
• Susan Moeller, Director of the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) at the University of Maryland, USA on photographic selection and the London 2012 Summer Olympic coverage
• former SGS Vice President Edward Mortimer on impartiality and the BBC’s coverage of the Arab Spring
• Gerry Power, Managing Director and Head of Innovation of InterMedia, UK on “Mobile Information Habits” among 16-25 year olds
• SGS Director of Education, Jochen Fried and Associate Director of Education, David Goldman, on global citizenship
• Steve Reese, Professor of Journalism at University of Texas at Austin on media literacy theory and framing
• Manuel Guerrero, Dean of Communication at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, on “Media, Citizenship and Digital Literacies”
• JoAnna Wasserman, Education Initiatives Manager at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, on “Propaganda and Deception”
• Renee Hobbs, Professor and Founding Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island, who gave this year’s Bailey Morris-Eck lecture on International Media, Economics, and Trade, entitled: “The Blurring of Art, Journalism and Propaganda”

The students’ media literacy curriculum also consisted of research projects, group work, practical workshops and “Civic Voices and Media Empowerment” roundtable discussions, focussing on multiple regions of the world.

The Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change concluded on Friday, August 10 with the presentation of multimedia projects from the participating students.

All presentations will be made available on the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change website.

Related links:

Stephen Salyer’s presentation: Making Change: Tools for the Media Entrepreneur (PDF)

Stephen Salyer’s presentation: Making Change: Tools for the Media Entrepreneur (MP3 Audio)

Founder of the Amani Institute Roshan Paul’s storytelling video:

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