A pontifical university in Rome is launching a new digital journalism
program on Feb. 14 as widespread response to Pope Benedict's Twitter
account continues.
“This course puts our university at the forefront of studies in this
field and confirms the Church's desire to be present with the greatest
commitment in this area,” said Bishop Enrico dal Covolo, rector of the
Pontifical Lateran University.
The new master's degree in digital journalism comes after Pope Benedict
XVI reached 2.5 million twitter followers after posting his first tweet
on Dec. 12, 2012.
This Sunday, the Pope will add Latin to his eight other languages he
tweets in, which already include English, Spanish, Arabic, French,
German, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.
Course lecturers for the Lateran university's new program include the
Vatican's Secretariat of State media adviser Greg Burke, who took up
office just last year after working for Fox News as Rome correspondent.
The master's degree will be in Italian and hold a maximum of 35
students who will study in depth online journalism and how to start up
their own business in the industry.
The course leaders will be former director of Italian news outlet Sky Tg24 Emilio Carelli and Dario Edoardo Viganò.
Other lecturers will include director of Huffington Post Italy Lucia
Annunziata, Mario Giordano – the director of Tg LA7 and Tgcom 24 – ANSA
president Giulio Anselmi, La Stampa columnist Marcello Sorgi and writer
and blogger, Vittorio Zambardino.
The program will offer students internships in Italian national
newspapers as well as in the Huffington Post Italy, YOUniversalMedia,
Tgcom24, Sky Tg24 and Google.