Did we just meet the next Edward R. Murrow?

What is America’s next generation of journalists interested in?  For a group of 20 media students from Kent State University, the answer was definitely: Estonia!  This is what we learned when they came to visit us and chat with U.S. Ambassador Jeff Levine at the U.S. Embassy on Thursday. 

These students – who are studying photojournalism, multimedia, electronic media, traditional broadcast and print media, magazine journalism and a host of other topics – have come to Estonia for a 10 day trip to meet and speak with Estonia’s movers and shakers.   Along the way they are publishing stories on a website called http://www.datelinebaltics.org/.  So far they have met with the Ukrainian ambassador to Estonia, visited the Museum of the Occupations, and sometime soon they’ll be meeting with President Ilves  - who, funny enough, was once a journalist too!

Ambassador Levine with journalism students from Kent State University

At the Ambassador’s meeting with the students he gave them a brief overview of the U.S.-Estonian bilateral relationship and highlighted a lot of the successes Estonia has achieved since re-independence.  Estonia has become so successful, the Ambassador emphasized, that the U.S. and Estonia now work together as partners in other countries, including Moldova, to encourage the growth of democracy.

Ambassador Levine discusses Estonian-U.S. bilateral relationship.  

The Ambassador (himself a former journalist and one of the founding staff at USA Today) then fielded questions from the students, who were very interested in Estonia’s security position with regard to the critical events playing out in Ukraine.  He explained about NATO’s recent decision to beef up Baltic Air Policing and how important this is to our Baltic allies.

Our one hour meeting went very quickly and the Ambassador was pretty impressed with the caliber of questions and background knowledge these budding journalists brought to the table.  Who knows, maybe among them is the next Edward R. Murrow?  They certainly came further than the last three feet!     

Blogpost by: APAO Alison Davis
Photo by: Social Media Assistant, U.S. Embassy Tallinn