Caimán Journalism Training (CJT) is a recently developed, Miami-based non-profit organization that seeks to provide Cuban journalists with training and capacity-building programs. CJT provides journalists with needed, but inaccessible, technology and other materials, as well as assistance finding ways to publish their work. The programming at CJT also aims to supply journalists with resources, such as educational materials pertaining to the role of the press in civil society, and commonly used journalistic style guides. Internationally, CJT intends to better link independent journalists in Cuba with foreign media outlets to publish their stories. CJT’s mission is to empower Cuban journalists to create an independent press that reaches all Cubans, not just activists, and is trusted to report accurate news, not government propaganda. For more information on CJT, visit their website at www.cjtpress.org.

 

We wish to thank Nicolas Jimenez, Chairman of Caimán Journalism Training, for taking the time to answer our questions.

 

Only time will tell what the broad implications of these releases will be on the media landcape and Cuban society at large. For now, all we know with any certainty is that the regime is willing to release those prisoners who agree to leave the island. In a sense, the regime isn’t so much releasing people as it is offering them a chance to go into exile. This isn’t the first time the regime has “released” prisoners to other countries as “concessions” that, in effect, only serve to alleviate pressure on itself.

 

New spaces are opening in Cuba for CJT, though, and it is because of the persistent and innovative work of independent journalists and other civil society leaders on the island—not any pragmatism on the part of the Castro regime.

 

 

As technology puts more of the power of big media outlets into the pockets of countless Cubans, laws like Law 88—along with much of the rest of the nonsense in Cuba’s Constitution and penal code—is being made largely impossible to enforce with any efficiency. Cubans are beginning to realize that the risks of speaking out are slowly shrinking.

 

That said, those risks are not disappearing. CJT is conscious of the fact that to speak out in Cuba is to put a lot on the line, including one’s livelihood and physical freedom. The key is to encourage Cuban journalists to minimize the risk in ways that also maximize the potential of their work.

 

Incidentally, some simple solutions can achieve both of those things. We see Cuba’s independent press as needing more private sector support. Making Cuba’s independent press completely independent of government support (direct or indirect) would not only make it more credible in the eyes of the international community, but also contribute to shielding journalists from the regime’s empty blanket accusations that journalists are “mercenaries” on the payrolls of the CIA and other foreign government agencies.

 

 

Blogging is as much a medium as any other. Our focus is on independent journalism, and if blogging is the medium that helps make Cuba’s press freer, more effective, and more independent, then CJT will look for every possible way for Cubans to get the most out of blogging.

 

Blogging has become prevalent in Cuba for a number of reasons. For one, use of blogging services is ususally free. The simplicity of most blogs makes publishing less taxing on bandwidth and Internet time cards (both of which are precious commodities on the island). And many blogging platforms (like WordPress and Blogger) make it easy to seamlessly integrate multiple Web 2.0 tools, especially microblogging services like Twitter.

 

But the most popular and user-friendly blogging platforms have a serious deficiency that CJT is looking for innovative ways to address. They tend to make templates, designs, and individual posts difficult to work on while offline.

 

For a journalist in the U.S., for instance, spending hours on the Internet to write, edit, and design a blog seems natural. In Cuba, on the other hand, just one such Internet session could cost a month’s salary or more. Plus, the longer you’re online, the more you’re giving the government to monitor, since just about all available Internet access in Cuba goes through the government and its censors.

 

Finding a way for Cubans to make their blogging experiences more like the ones many of the rest of us have—without asking them to spend more time connected to the Internet—would go a very long way in helping them refine their products. We’re actively looking for those solutions and welcome any ideas.

Since CJT is not physically located in Cuba, does this pose challenges for carrying out its work?

 

While not being able to work from inside Cuba all the time has its disadvantages, it’s not always a handicap. If our staff and volunteers were in Cuba, we couldn’t spend the same amount of time keeping up with developments in the “blogosphere,” meet freely with journalists, or even communicate with one another as effectively.

 

It’s strange, but information often does travel more quickly between, say, Miami and Havana than it does between Havana and Camagüey.

 

Still, we do need boots on the ground every now and then, so travel to the island plays a role in the way we work. I use “boots on the ground” in the most figurative, nonmilitary sense, of course. Perhaps “flip-flops on the ground” would be a better way to put it.

 

It would be ideal for us to have the kind of access to journalists in Cuba that the regime has made virtually impossible. In light of the obstacles the government has put in our way, we’ve decided to make sure that the tools and information we deliver to Cuba can be useful to anyone who happens to come across them. We’re more focused on making broad changes in the way Cuban civil society informs itself and the outside world about what’s going on there than we are on supporting any particular group of journalists.