CAC School

The Caucasus Authors’ Course (CAC), more often referred to as CAC-School, is a unique and unprecedented school of journalism.
First of all, it brings together the journalists from across the Caucasus, including the conflict areas, i.e. young media professionals, including from the conflicting communities, are given a chance to get acquainted and quite often build cooperation with each other.

Secondly, a diverse Caucasus region is represented in the CAC-School not only by its students, but also by trainers .

Thirdly, an intensive course, that helps young journalists become real professionals, does not prevent them from their job – the main part of training is conducted online, at the time suitable for the employed trainees.

Online training alternates with “real-time” lectures, conducted on the neutral ground for all Caucasus regions. They are built so that a trainer could simultaneously work with 3-4 trainees, not more.

“Not only have I professionally developed, but my vision of the world has also changed!””

— Ibragim Chochiev, class of 2014, Tskhinval/i

Curriculum and training module

The course syllabus is based on three key modules:

–       Creative writing / investigative journalism

–       Conflict analysis / reporting

–       Photography / multimedia

–       Video / TV / documentary production

The school is designed for active professional journalists. Even they usually need to brush up on understanding of many fundamental issues related to modern genres, journalistic ethics and international media standards. Although these important issues are not put in a separate module, they are paid considerable attention to throughout the course.

Students and Alumni

CAC School would-be students shall go through a tough competition. Young journalists from each region of the South Caucasus are selected each year. Preference is usually given to the applicants, whose cover letters clearly demonstrate that: – journalism is exactly what they associate their future with; – they are at the outset of their career; – they are truly interested in developing their competence in compliance with the toughest international standards; – have sufficient command of the Russian language so as to be able to understand the trainers and communicate with them (writing in any other language is possible).