Alumni database for RIAS Berlin participants in USA, Germany on the way

February 13, 2023

Alumni database for RIAS Berlin participants in USA, Germany on the way

The RIAS Berlin Commission is hoping to building a stronger and more transparent RIAS network and we need your help!

Over the years, many of former RIAS Berlin Commission program participants have expressed interest in being part of such a transatlantic network — an easily accessible network where alumni could be more easily and directly connected.

For that goal, RIAS Berlin alumni and US coordinator Pam Ortega has volunteered to try to put together an alumni database for everyone interested in connecting with their former group members as well as other Americans or other Germans from different years.

There are more than 1,900 RIAS alumni in the United States and Germany who have taken part in programs all the way back to 1993. We are hoping this database could lead to more RIAS alum meetings and contacts in various cities across Germany and the United States. Participation is entirely voluntary.

There have been many timesin the past when, for instance, a German correspondent in Washington DC is planning a reporting trip to South Dakota or Texas and inquires with the RIAS office in Berlin if there is a RIAS alumni in, say, Sioux Falls or San Antonio who could possibly help with contacts to improve their reporting or when an American journalist in New York is eager to contact journalists in Berlin after a giant fish tank explodes and spills its contents out onto a busy street and is looking for possible video clips of the disaster.

Or sometimes German and American journalists working on similar stories — such as the difference between how the United States and Germany deal with controversial historical statutes — will even work together on their stories and share their reporting work.

Their stories have aired in both countries and used some of the same soundbites.

Having a RIAS alumni data base would help members contact each other faster and more directly.

So please take a look at Pam Ortega’s alumni survey and please participate.  Here is the alumni survey link: https://forms.gle/HpXefENMEGRw4yo7A