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´óÏó´«Ã½ Students' Club – bbcstudentsclub – is now live on the largest Russian-language blogging platform, LiveJournal.com. The new online community is aimed at both students of journalism and students of English.

The creation of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Students' Club online community came as a result of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian "University Tour" in the spring of 2010 when the broadcaster held a series of events at universities and major libraries in St Petersburg, Moscow, Voronezh and Yekaterinburg.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian showcased the best of its journalism, including new ways of reaching audiences by using the latest technologies, and engaged young audiences in live radio debates broadcast on the interactive programme, Vam slovo (Have Your Say). The ´óÏó´«Ã½ team also demonstrated ´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian's multimedia Learning English content at the universities and major libraries at each location.

As part of the new joint project between ´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian and LiveJournal, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Students' Club will feature the content of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ College of Journalism as well as the bbcrussian.com website's multimedia Learning English lessons, in text, audio and video.

The bbcstudentsclub community on LiveJournal also will serve as a platform for young journalists to pitch their story ideas to the ´óÏó´«Ã½. It also will feature the best of the bbcrussian.com Editors' Blog.

Head of LiveJournal Russia, Svetlana Ivannikova, says: "LiveJournal has become an integral part of the lives of millions of people, it helps us to better ourselves and the world around us. LiveJournal removes borders, and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Students' Club project confirms this once again. Being part of the bbcstudentsclub community is both fun and educational, and no matter where people live, they can share their experiences and skills and also improve their English by communicating with speakers of English. We are confident that the project will have a lot of fans."

´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian Managing Editor, Dmitry Shishkin, comments: "We are delighted with the launch of the bbcstudentsclub community on LiveJournal. We've had a very successful experience partnering LiveJournal through our joint citizen-journalism project, Live_Report. I am confident that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Students' Club will attract talented young journalists. It will give them the opportunity to hone their writing skills – and help the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to further extend its stringer network across Russia.

"During our 'University Tour' earlier this year we could see that young Russian journalists were really interested in the editorial guidelines and practical experience of the ´óÏó´«Ã½, as well as in how the world of journalism is changing. We hope that by bringing the unique experience and perspective of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ we will be giving Russian journalists a valuable resource."

´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian's next "University Tour" takes place between Monday 13 and Friday 17 September 2010 when the ´óÏó´«Ã½ team will visit Tomsk and Novosibirsk.

Notes to Editors

´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian is a multimedia broadcaster offering radio, online and mobile content to Russian-speaking audiences, with up-to-the-minute news, features and analysis. ´óÏó´«Ã½ Russian radio programmes are streamed online via bbcrussian.com and are broadcast on shortwave, on medium wave in Moscow (1260 MW), St Petersburg (1260 MW) and Yekaterinburg (666 MW). They are also available direct to home via the Hotbird 2 satellite. The 24/7 website, bbcrussian.com, offers news and information in text, audio and video, while the latest headlines and video news bulletins are available for download on mobile phones via bbcrussian.com/mobile.

LiveJournal.com is the most popular blogging site and social media platform in Russia. It also has a global following of more than 28 million monthly readers (Omniture). It has over 26 million accounts worldwide and continues to add over 350,000 every month. The Russian segment of LiveJornal has more than 22 million users monthly, 3.8 million Cyrillic accounts and 210 million posts.

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