New director takes reins at Digital Journalism Center

March 8, 2011
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Versión en español aquí.

Rosalía Orozco, who has directed the journalism program at the University of Guadalajara the past two years, is the new director of the University’s Digital Journalism Training Center.

Rector General Marco Antonio Cortés Guardado announced the appointment Monday while installing the members of the Center’s newly formed Advisory Council.

Rosalía Orozco

The Center was launched in 2008 with the support of the International Center for Journalists, which provided a Knight International Journalism fellow, James Breiner, to direct the project.

New courses, redesigned website
Orozco took over the Center several weeks ago and has already redesigned the website. She has plans to expand course offerings to include management of social networks, digital tools for investigative journalism and crisis management for professional communicators.

One of her goals this year is to complete the process of establishing an online master‘s degree program in digital journalism, one of the first of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world.

Orozco played a key role in the design of the master’s and has involved the Center in the University’s journalism program.

She has worked as an editor in several newspapers and has a master’s degree in communication from the University of Guadalajara.

The Advisory Council members are Manuel Moreno Castañeda, rector of the Virtual University, which houses the Center; Luis Miguel Gonzalez, editor of El Economista newspaper in Mexico; Sandra Crucianelli, internationally known expert in digital journalism, from Argentina; Juan Carlos Nunez Bustillos, journalism professor and ombudsman for the newspaper Público; Maria Elena Hernandez, professor of public communication at the University; Luis Manuel Botello, assistant director of Special Projects at the International Center for Journalists; and Breiner, a digital journalism consultant and trainer. 

The Digital Journalism Training Center has given online training to 430 journalism professionals from 22 countries. A notable project was its course on “Safety in Journalism: Working in High-Risk Situations,” offered three times to a total of 90 Mexican journalists.

Among the courses to be offered by the center this year are “How to Write for the Web,” “Managing a Digital Newsroom” and “New Financial Models for Digital Journalism.”

Media coverage of the event is below:

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