International Winter School of Journalism and Communication has been held for five years in the mountainous region of the Zailiysky Alatau, not far from Almaty.

Students from different specialties, many students from the Faculty of Journalism, as well as from the universities of the UN Model New Silk Road from Central Asia, mostly from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, could take part in the event. This year was marked by the celebration of World Radio Day, dedicated to sports. The organizer of this event was the Faculty of Journalism of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. So, from the 25^th to 27^th of January, 2018 a number of master classes on radio and sports, sports and journalism, sports and digital news literacy were held. The problems and role of sports journalism in Kazakhstan, revealing the topic of the school “Radio and Sport: Developing the Knowledge Society” were told by invited coaches, mostly practicing specialists. Among the problems can be noted the dry enumeration of the results of the competitions, the abundance of “foreign materials”, mostly from the Internet, while the opinion of the trainers themselves is more authoritative than journalists among the readers. Sergey Karpov, a specialist on the communication and information at the UNESCO Cluster Office, noted that local competitions are very poorly covered, and especially weakly - the role of athletes. During the time of major sports events, 40% of all sportsmen are women, but athletes are covered by less than four percent of all sports media. “Even when writing material about women athletes, first of all, attention is drawn not to achievement, but to appearance”. Is it justified? A vivid example can be Sabina Altynbekova - a Kazakhstani volleyball player, a member of the national team of the Republic of Kazakhstan. At first, she is considered as a beauty, and then as an athlete. It turns out that for us her beauty has more than her achievements” - asked S.Karpov. Bakhyt Kutpanbai, an editor-in-chief of “Kazakh radio” in Almaty congratulated the organizers and participants on the opening of the Fifth International Winter School. He noted the role of radio in the coverage of sports competitions: “Radio, as one of the old media, still does not lose its uniqueness and is not inferior to any media in its efficiency”. A cocktail reception was followed after the opening ceremony, on which a cake, which became the tradition of the annual winter school, was cut. Since the theme of the media school was devoted to radio and sports, students and guests had the opportunity to try their hand at arm wrestling and raising weights. Sergey Karpov cut the cake. The next day’s program was expected to include a master class from leading journalists of the country in the field of radio and sports. Yesengul Kapkyzy, Rauan Okas, Meiirzhan Zhylkybay shared their experience, told about the rights and opportunities in the age of Internet development and noted the mistakes that they had to face in the course of journalistic activities. Often we become hostages of fake pages, misinformation and spam. On such sites as: www.stopfake.org, www.factcheck.kz, http://stat.gov.kz, you can check the information for reliability and avoid virus mailings. To dilute the imposed mental load on the students, coordinators organized a mass ride on rubber cylinders near the educational and recreational complex “Tau-Turan”. On the third closing day, the master-class in the interactive format was started by the “Informbureau” announcer of the 31 channel - Erkanat Kopzhasaruly. He shared the secrets of the oratorical skill and technique of setting diction. And he also told us a bit about his impressions about the winter school: “At the moment, students are extremely interested in practical knowledge. The information department of TV programs works like a machine. The days are scheduled ahead of time. And the responsibility here is very important, because the work is already written out, then you do not have time to train young journalists. To have more schools that are very useful for sharing experiences. For me this is the first experience of the training conducting. I can not say anything about the impressions, but I chose the interactive format for a reason. After all, journalism is first and foremost, communication with the people, that is, in its pure form, interactive”. Then Ruslan Medelbek – a sports journalist of international scale, a reporter-editor of the radio “Azattyk” spoke with a very useful presentation. Students learned about the important sport terms from his presentation. “What the role of accreditation for journalists is; what the mix-zone, press-tribune, nonsport, the press center are, what the most important two minutes are, how the report is written and what kinds of the report are” shared R.Medelbek. Saule Barlybaeva, Doctor of Historical Sciences, a professor, the first Kazakh master of international class in rhythmic gymnastics, presented the latest lecture on the skill of the journalist in sporting events. It should be noted that this year a delegation from Kyrgyzstan came to winter school.

Also, students from such cities of Kazakhstan as Petropavlovsk, Karaganda, Kyzylorda, Shymkent and Atyrau arrived. Great contribution to the organization and conduct of the Winter School was made by Gulmira Sultanbaeva, a professor of al-Farabi KazNU. This type of media trainings and meetings is a unique platform for the experience exchange between coaches and young journalists “coming to their heels”, acquaintance between the future “sharks of the pen” and the enrichment of valuable knowledge from the lips of specialists from the “field”.