REACHING ACROSS NATIONAL BARRIERS: TRANSBORDER JOURNALISM COLLABORATIONS IN EUROPE.

Research on journalism in Europe tends to conclude that there is no such thing as "European" journalism. Yet scholarship has largely ignored peripheral manifestations of regional transborder journalism. The aim of this paper is to illuminate the ways in which broadcast journalists engaging in regional transborder collaborations approach their work. Two such cooperatively produced programs (France/Belgium and France/Germany) provide case studies. This article examines how program content reflects Europe as experienced by the periphery of each nation, and how an understanding of Europe is constructed in non-elite terms. The article investigates how the journalists involved in these programs are reaching across the silos of national journalism cultures. This investigation is based on analysis of original program content as well as interviews with the primary journalists involved in the collaborations. There are numerous hurdles to such work, but there are also fruitful connections emerging largely under the radar of journalism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]