How did you get to know FEJS?
I totally bumped into FEJS by chance. My professor received by whom ever the invitation to the General Assembly in Helsinki and sent it to all her students.
What is so special about FEJS?
FEJS is a great chance to connect young journalists allover Europe. You meet journalism students from Slovenia, Greece or Finland and you learn so much about the people, the country and the media from those countries. Especially the insight view into Greece was (and still is) very interesting in the last years (keyword euro crisis). Our media in Germany talks a lot different about those things, than the Greek people experience it.
Did you get a job/internship through FEJS, how did it go?
Thanks to my Slovenian friend Bratko I found an internship in Maribor at the German and English radio station RadioSi. But he did not only help me in contact the right people at the station, he also helped me in finding a room to live and he introduced me to some of his friends who helped me quite a lot to by showing me the city, bought a monthly bus ticket for me and helped me to socialize in Maribor.
Did you get useful information through FEJS, that helped you in journalism?
Last year I worked as a PR person for a video games publisher called Daedalic Entertainment. My job was to find games media in other countries than Germany, USA and UK. So I asked my FEJS friends and they told me some magazines and TV shows.
At my actual job as media journalist I had to research some special finance magazines in some European countries (e.g. Italy). You know, what I did. That’s what FEJS helped me actually directly at my work.
What do you think about the quality of FEJS events?
Those are great regarding two points:
First one is networking. You never meet anywhere that much young journalists or students of journalism from all over Europe.
Second point is: You can learn much from the lectures and workshops. I would say, you can learn how to be a better journalist at all.
Why should every journalism student join FEJS?
You can get much chances in works thanks to the Forum for European Journalism Students. It’s all about the great network.
Anything to add, f.ex. useful links for journalism students or some useful information?
Maybe it’s to pithy and obvious, but one tip for future journalists: Stay interested in everything and open minded. It will help you to get in touch with interesting and new people and learn something about the world you maybe would have never expected.
Felix Mohring is 24 was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, and lives and works in Hamburg as a media journalist for New Business Verlag. He studied at the University of Applied Science Magdeburg-Stendal.