The 2nd Meeting of Media Directors from the Azores and North America will take place next week in the East Coast of the United States. The event is sponsored by the Regional Government, through the Regional Directorate for the Communities, and will take place in the cities of Fall River and New Bedford, Massachusetts, on October 25 and 26.
The meeting will bring together press, radio and television executives from the Autonomous Region of the Azores as well as media organisations serving the Portuguese communities in the United States. The initiative aims to discuss the new challenges of transatlantic communication and formally establish the “Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance” association, an instrument that will encourage cooperation, information sharing and exchanges between media entities on both sides of the Atlantic.
The opening session will be hosted by the Regional Director for the Communities, José Andrade. It will be attended by the president of the Casa dos Açores of New England, Francisco Viveiros, the director of the PBBI – Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute at California State University, Diniz Borges, the Counselors of the Portuguese Communities for New England, João Pacheco and Paulo Martins, and the Counselors of the Azorean Diaspora for Massachusetts, Rui Baptista, and Rhode Island, Márcia Ponte.
The first panel is entitled “The current situation and future needs of cooperation between the Media organisations of the Azores and the Diaspora.” The featured speakers are representatives of the regional media: Paulo Simões (Açoriano Oriental/Rádio Açores TSF), José Lourenço (Diário Insular), Paulo Correia (RTP/Açores and Antena 1 Açores), Paulo Feliciano (Vitec – Azores TV), Carlos Pires Antunes (Rádio Atlântida) and Susana Garcia (Tribuna das Ilhas).
The second panel will be entitled “The Creation of the Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance” and will feature speeches by media representatives from the United States of America: Francisco Resendes (Portuguese Times), Lurdes da Silva (O Jornal), Helena Silva (The Portuguese Channel), Jorge Morais (Rádio WJFD), Frank Baptista (Rádio Voz do Emigrante) and Alberto Benedito (SPT Television and Rádio Clube Português).
The two panels, moderated by José Andrade and Diniz Borges, include discussion sessions with representatives of other media outlets from the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and California. This 2nd Meeting will be replicated in due course with the media organisations serving the Portuguese communities in Canada.
In addition to the working sessions, the Azorean media representatives will have the opportunity to visit several Portuguese media organisations in the cities of New Bedford and Fall River, namely Rádio Voz do Emigrante, O Portuguese Times, O Jornal, Rádio WJFD and the Portuguese Channel.
This 2nd Meeting culminates with the signing of a memorandum of understanding for the establishment of the “Azores – Diaspora Media Alliance,” open to all media organisations that wish to join, under the aegis of the PBBI – Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute of California State University, Fresno.
The 1st Meeting of Media Directors from the Azores and North America, held in Ponta Delgada on May 19, was attended by 12 media directors serving the largest Azorean communities in the United States and Canada.
This initiative is supported by the House of the Azores of New England, the California State University and the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD).
