By Anh Nhat Nguyen Tran | Mon., November 7, 4:33 PM
Anh Nhat Nguyen Tran receives her course certificate from Mathieu Robbins and Lisa Essex, Thomson Reuters Foundation course trainers.
The phone call from the programme administrator at the Thomson Reuters Foundation office offering me a place on their Writing and Reporting News course in London was indeed unexpected. I even still think about it now that I am back.
The first lesson of the course that we had was on forming questions. We were set up in pairs and had to interview our partners to get the information necessary for a short presentation. The session on the inverted pyramid provided us with structuring techniques to provide condensed but adequate information to the readers. Story writing exercises were realistic and helped me in areas of weakness such as using quotes in the best way possible.
The discussion on 10 ethics rules fed our journalistic appetite and I was extremely interested to learn about the essential qualities that make an ideal journalist. During the course we had chance to listen to Mr Peter Apps, a risk correspondent for Reuters, about his precious experience in his job.
However, our learning experience extended outside of the classroom. We also had guided tours of the Reuters newsroom and of the Financial Times to see how the biggest news agency and one of the famous newspapers in the UK run. They were both very professional, to a standard that my job in an Asian country is far from reaching. Attending the youTrust workshop was also very interesting. I consider this website to be a very meaningful tool for connecting that should be widely promoted. It gives us a means to share the issues that we are concerned about and to effectively use the information we have. By raising the topic about Victims of Agent orange in Vietnam on the youTrust website, my team was awarded the winner, receiving the newest Reuters pictures book as a prize. Being a Vietnamese journalist, I was very happy to promote what is a hot issue in my country.
This course also improved teamwork for everyone. Activities like drawing the perfect journalist, listing out ten best and worse characteristics of journalist and creating a package on youTrust brought us together.
Thanks to our lovely teachers, Lisa Essex and Mathieu Robbins, we had a successful training course. They made the classes very exiting and very motivating; we found fun and useful knowledge almost all the time in class. The trainers did not hesitate to share their experiences with us and to answer any of our questions.
“Let the stories come out with truth, objective view and strong sources,” is the key message I’ll take away from the course. We had a great time both in classes and outside socializing with participants and new friends from Brazil, China, Colombia, Egypt, Hong Kong, Italy, Myanmar, Paraguay, Slovakia and Uganda.
This course has refreshed and changed my perspecitive and I am now always looking for chances to apply what I have learned.
Thank you Thomson Reuters Foundation for the chance connection we had.
Leave a comment:
IMPORTANT: Your comment will not appear immediately as we vet all messages before publication. We don't publish comments that are racist or otherwise offensive. Nor do we publish comments that advertise products or services. Please keep your comment concise and do not write in capitals.
Post a Comment
Post a Comment