Shorthand

Brussels Press Corps

Gabi Limón

YMGE Crisis 2017

@YMGECrisis2017

Letter from the Dais

Dear Delegates,

Hello and welcome to the YMGE VII Press Corps! My name is Gabi Limón and I will be your committee director at this year’s conference. This year at YMGE is sure to be an exciting one and I can’t wait to meet you all in November!

As someone interested since high school in international affairs and journalism – and where the two meet and connect – I could not be more thrilled to talk and write with you about the two. I’m a sophomore History major from Santa Barbara, California, and outside of YMGE I’m also involved with Yale’s own MUN team, and its January on-campus conference. Though I was much more involved with journalism in high school, I’ve continued my reporting through two Yale publications, the Globalist and the Review of International Studies. Outside of class and extracurriculars, I’m attempting to open a student-run coffee shop and working at Yale’s art gallery. I’m always happy to talk about any of these things, so feel free to reach out!

As members of the Press Corps, you will be expected to keep careful track of the fast-paced crises YMGE is known for, and to provide quick quality reporting in innovative and collaborative ways. That may sound intimidating to some of you, but I encourage you not to worry! Whether you’re the editor-in-chief of your school’s newspaper or you’ve never written a word outside class before in your life, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to learn and explore in this committee. I promise the moment you start tracking your first story you’ll be interested, challenged, and hooked for the entire conference!

This topic guide will try to prepare you as much as possible by letting you know about the special format of the Press Corps committee, what you’ll be doing during committee sessions, and how you should research ahead of time. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me! We want to try to make this conference as accessible and the experience as smooth as possible for you, so that we can have an amazing four days this fall! My email is gabriella.limon@yale.edu. I look forward to meeting you all soon!

All best,

Gabi Limón

Press Corps Committee Director

Yale Model Government Europe VII

History

The Press Corps of Brussels, Belgium is one of the largest in the world, growing consistently in past decades from a mere 259 accredited journalists in 1976 to over 1,000 registered communications professionals in 2007. Though it has since shrunk to about the size of the press corps of Washington, DC (around 900), Brussels journalists are still one of the largest and most important journalism hotspots in the world.

Despite the large size of the Brussels Press Corps, most journalists operate out of small outposts and represent a larger international or national organization. As a result, many journalists are generalists, meaning that they are expected to cover and be knowledgeable about a wide array of issues and areas. We will try to capture this versatility in committee, as you will be asked to research and report on diverse topics just as Brussels journalists do.

Though reporting in Brussels is surely an exciting way to be on top of the very latest in European news, belonging to the Press Corps is also a responsibility. For example, a Brussels Press Corps member representing Le Monde will likely only get a single article on EU affairs on the front page back in France. That journalist thus has the power to influence national thought on EU issues, and it has been shown that in many cases Brussels Press Corps reporting with an anti-or pro-European Union tilt can have significant impact on public attitudes toward the EU.

Committee Guidelines

As members of the YMGE Press Corps, you will be tasked with observing, recording, writing about, publicizing, and commenting on the goings-on of the committees at YMGE. Like the press corps of a standard MUN conference, you will be based in a physical room and spend most of your time writing, editing, and publishing with your peers. Your director (me!) will be available for feedback and advice. In addition, due to YMGE’s crisis-oriented format, you’ll be actively breaking crisis news to other committees and tracking how committees respond/how the crisis develops.

Your focus can vary according to your experience/interest; if you’re a novice journalist but excited about multimedia forms of publishing, you could take advantage of YMGE’s various social media outlets and create shorter, more social content, or focus on by-the-minute updates. If you’ve written in a journalistic style many times before, maybe you’ll be better suited to an in-depth feature piece about a certain committee’s dynamics, or a step-by-step guide to a complicated cross-committee issue. Though we will be prepared to give out important issue assignments and crisis update information, there will be plenty opportunities to go in your own direction, and to participate in collaborative, innovative journalism.

Ethical Journalistic Guidelines

As mentioned in the History section of the topic guide, the reporters of the Brussels Press Corps have an added weight of responsibility in their journalism, as they are often sole voice their publication’s readers will hear on a European issue. As a result, members of the YMGE Press Corps should be cautious and intentional with their language, painting an issue without bias and as true to the facts as possible. Fact-checking will be essential, and re-reading or getting the input of your peers are great strategies to produce the highest-quality journalism you can.

In your interactions with and writing about other delegates, utmost respect and professionalism is required. Personally insulting other delegates, name-calling, and unnecessarily negative (or positive) bias is prohibited. Criticism of a delegate’s policies or actions is perfectly acceptable, especially if such criticism is in line with your paper’s traditional stance on such a policy or action. But be sure to remember to present the opinions and stances of various delegates in your writing!

Please also try to be courteous in other committees, not causing undue disruption or chaos. Try to conduct your research and reporting during unmoderated caucuses if you plan to gather quotations and opinions (and you should).

Because of the nature of the Press Corps, our committee will be much more dispersed and informal than many other committees. But please remember that we will check in with your projects and writing regularly to track progress, so try to be as efficient with your time as possible.

Questions to Consider

1. What is the historical reporting and publishing style of your news outlet? Are you mainly opinion and editorial pieces or features and news? Are you known for longform or shortform pieces? Are you published daily or biweekly? Knowing the traits of the publication you’re representing is critical to complying with its tone, history, and style.

2. Consider the readership of your publication. What issues are they directly impacted by, or care deeply about? What might they have strong (or nonexistent!) opinions on? Will your writing challenge or reinforce their conception of the issue in any way? Will they care about these developments?

3. Know the context. How is the event/development on which you’re reporting remarkable/unique? Did a delegate act contrary to his country’s usual policies? Did a diplomatic relationship better or worsen? Is a committee responding how you would expect it to, or has something different and interesting occurred?

4. Is there another side to the story that you’re missing? Are you reporting exactly as something happened, or adding in some of your opinions and bias?

5. Could what you’re writing be said more efficiently or clearly? Are your titles and quotations helpful and interesting?

6. What format best suits your writing? Or what kind of article best suits the format in which you want to write? Can this be presented interestingly through social media or other outlets?