Lulu Garcia-Novarro
Lulu Garcia-Navarro

The challenges of telling the stories of people from a diverse range of cultures will be the subject of “Cultures in Conflict: Navigating Cultural Difference in International Human Rights Reporting,” a conference scheduled at the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus on Feb. 9 and 10.

Sponsored by UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications with the Institute for Regional Studies, the event will feature five panels on which human rights reporters from organizations including CBS News, USA Today and Newsday will discuss how to best turn encounters with people from disparate backgrounds into effective journalism.

The panels are dubbed “Press Censorship Across Cultures,” “Foreign Desk Editors and Cultural Distance,” “Drawing Upon Multiple Cultural Perspectives,”“Staying Safe in Unfamiliar Environments” and “Visually Representing ‘The Other.’”

In addition, reporters will discuss how they share stories about their own cultures with people living in other parts of the world.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro, the host of NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” will kick off the Feb 9 session, followed up by Feb. 10 keynote speaker Sheila Coronel, founder of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

The conference is slated for the H.F. DeLuca Forum in UW-Madison's Discovery Building. Admission is free, though attendees must register in advance at the conference’s website.