Early autumn in Babelsberg: The first coloured leaves fall on to the wide avenues, the late light of summer intensifies the earth tones of the Wilhelminian style villas. Not far from the studios where Marlene Dietrich once worked and now Tom Cruise is filming stands a plain but pleasant brick building which houses the training school of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) which in the era of globalisation is aptly named “Electronic Media School“. This international name for three floors of technology fittingly describes the first weekend in September 2007 when 41 young journalists from Europe and Israel were milling about in order to hold their annual workshop which this year was hosted jointly by the Herbert Quandt-Foundation and the Potsdam Media Summit M100. The topic was “Dialogue of Cultures” and the junior journalists, enthusiastic and eager for discussion demonstrated their talents by producing critical, thoughtful, profound articles, witty picture stories and stimulating film clips. The technical expertise and the good journalistic instinct aroused curiosity about the new breed of people engaged in the media emerging in Central and Eastern Europe. Perhaps Potsdam will establish itself as a meeting point for European journalists to-be and Babelsberg seems to be a good location for talents to mature.

Dr. Roland Löffler, Herbert Quandt-Stiftung