TrustMedia on Twitter
TOOLS and RESOURCES
Alumni directoryGet in touch with our growing alumni community
Subbing clinicFree sub-editing from Reuters professionals
Tips for journalistsHints and tips for better journalism
Find a training course
DO MORE with TrustMedia
TrustMedia Trainers Blog
-
Thomson Reuters Foundation leads second week of election reporting training in Bhutan
Monday at 3:38 PM | Comments ( 0 )
A second group of Bhutanese journalists arrived at the Bhutan Media Institute in Thimphu on Monday, May 21, to join a 5-day course on election reporting led by Thomson Reuters Foundation trainer Belinda Goldsmith. The practical, hands-on course aims to prepare a growing number of new, young journalists in Bhutan for the tiny Himalayan nation’s second democratic election in March 2013.
There was only 3 newspapers at the time of the first general election in 2008 but this has expanded to 12, prompting the need for more training for journalists just entering the profession.
The course focuses on the role of the media in a democratic election, the election and political processes in Bhutan, ethical and legal dangers that can arise in election coverage, and sharpening writing skills for election reporting. The course includes guest speakers such as the Chief Election Commissioner Kunzang Wangdi, MP Tshering Penjor from the National Assembly, and a senior local journalist who covered the first national election in 2008.
-
Foundation runs journalism training course in Bhutan
Thu., May 17, 9:56 PM | Comments ( 0 )
A group of 14 Bhutanese journalists attended at five-day course on Election Reporting run by the Bhutan Media Institute in collaboration with the Thomson Reuters Foundation from May 14-18. The focus was on the role that the media play in a democratic election, balanced, fair and accurate reporting of elections, and how to handle the ethical and legal challenges that can arise during election coverage.
Bhutan held its first national election in 2008 when there was just three newspapers in the country of 700,000 people that lies between India and China. The landlocked nation is now getting ready for another election in March 2013 and the media landscape has changed considerably, with 11 newspapers now printed in Bhutan as well as five radio stations and one state-funded TV station with two private TV channels in the pipeline.
Guest speakers at the course included the Chief Election Commission Dasho Kunzang Wangdi and MP Dasho Ugyen Dorji of the National Assembly of Bhutan who is chairman of the Labour and Employment Committee as well as the Media and ICT Committee.
-
Chinese journalists prepare for the London Olympics
Tue., May 8, 11:43 AM | Comments ( 0 )
Thomson Reuters Foundation conducted two courses in Chinafrom April 9 to 18 on Sport and Olympics reporting connected to the London Olympics.
In the first 5 day course, 18 journalists from Print, TV, Radio and Websites looked at the evolution of Sports from ancient times to the mega rich superstars of the present day.
The attendees were from organizations like Xinhua, CCTV and the China Daily with many of them about to travel toLondonto cover their first Olympic Games.
-
Egyptian journalists learn how to keep safe during violence
Thu., May 3, 3:38 PM | Comments ( 3 )
Last week, twelve Egyptian journalists took part in an intensive three-day training course in Cairo on security and safety of journalists while working in hostile environments.
The training, which was held April 19-21, included journalists from leading media organisations in Egypt including staff from Thomson Reuters Foundation's Aswat Masriya (www.aswaymasriya.com), a news portal which provides Egyptians with essential news and information on elections and politics.
The participants took the opportunity to share the problems they experienced in the field and discussed what challenges and violence they may face while reporting, especially during their coverage of the upcoming presidential elections (23 and 24 May).
-
A journalist's tip for uncovering North Korea's secrets
Thu., May 3, 3:22 PM | Comments ( 0 )
LONDON (TrustMedia) - North Korea - it's been called a hermit kingdom, the most closed and secretive society on earth, a reclusive, isolated state.
Access is severely limited and visits by foreign reporters are usually tightly controlled by government officials.
So, what options do international journalists have, if they want an insight into life in the totalitarian communist state?
-
Moving beyond the « F » word …
Thu., April 19, 3:04 PM | Comments ( 1 )
When it comes to malnutrition, it's photographs of emaciated children and words like famine, crisis or emergency that make headlines round the world.
But is that the real story?
As hunger once again stalks West Africa's Sahel region, journalists attending two Thomson Reuters Foundation workshops in Senegal in March heard that a key part of the story may be your mother's weight at birth.
-
Southeast Asian journalists tackle disaster reporting at Hanoi workshop
Thu., April 12, 2:08 PM | Comments ( 0 )
Twelve journalists from Vietnam and other Asian countries took part in a week-long workshop on Reporting Disasters and Crises in Hanoi in March, the third time the course has been held in the city under an agreement between Thomson Reuters Foundation and Vietnam Television (VTV).
Participants came from Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia and Nepal – all disaster-prone countries. Many already had experience of covering disasters, for example Typhoon Ketsana in Vietnam, floods and conflict in the Philippines and insecurity in Nepal. All the journalists were keen to hone their skills and share experiences.
For a week, they were living in the fictional land of Arkadia – the most disaster-prone country in the world. An earthquake, tsunami, rebel insurgency, deadly flu epidemic and mystery explosion - Arkadia had it all.
-
Writing and Reporting News Course March 26-30 in London
Tue., April 10, 10:35 AM | Comments ( 0 )
A diverse and colourful group of 13 journalists from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the United States assembled in the Thomson Reuters Foundation training room in Canary Wharf, London, on Monday, March 26, for a five-day the Writing and Reporting News course.
Steered by two TRF trainers, the participants enthusiastically tackled a series of writing and reporting exercises, ranging from basic “what’s the real news here?” stories to more complex, fast developing scenarios in both the general and business news sectors.
-
Informando sobre pobreza rural en Colombia
Fri., February 24, 10:15 PM | Comments ( 0 )
El curso "Informando sobre pobreza rural" en Bucaramanga, organizado por el Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA) y la Fundación Thomson Reuters, tuvo como actividad central una visita a comunidades campesinas en el oriente colombiano, que para el grupo significó pasar más de ocho horas en un transporte para recorrer menos de 500 kilómetros.
Rodrigo, uno de los participantes, no se quedó sólo en la anécdota de la incomodidad del viaje; encontró en las carreteras estrechas y vías secundarias dejadas a su suerte un foco para su reporteo de esa jornada.
Su crónica cuenta como viven trabajadores rurales con sus vías de comunicación y busca, con opiniones expertas y una observación aguda, algunas de las causas del problema.
-
UNFCCC/Com+/TRF media workshop in Durban -- Another climate cliffhanger
Tue., December 20, 2:36 PM | Comments ( 0 )
“Everything is impossible until it is done.” The words of Nelson Mandela were quoted repeatedly all around Durban’s vast International Convention Centre (ICC), home for two intense weeks to the United Nations climate change summit (COP 17). And they turned out to be prophetic, yet again.
The conference, begun on November 28 and due to end on Friday, December 9, overran through an exhausting final weekend, climaxing with a compromise but highly significant agreement just before 6 a.m. on Sunday, December 11.
The deal, in which all 194 participating countries agreed to negotiate a new, legally enforceable pact to fight climate change by 2015, had seemed impossible a few hours earlier as differences between industrialised states and the most powerful developing economies appeared unbridgeable. But a pre-dawn diplomatic “arm wrestle” between European Union and India broke the deadlock, with each side givIng a fraction of ground over the exact language, and enabling everyone to accept the deal – many still unhappy that it was nowhere near enough to save the countries most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change, but aware that it kept hope alive.
-
Understanding Lebanon's Natural Gas Challenge
Tue., December 6, 3:48 PM | Comments ( 0 )
BEIRUT - Lebanon, as the Lebanese themselves are quick to tell you, is a country in which nothing is simple. The discovery of untapped reserves of natural gas on their doorstep is not just an economic opportunity, it's a geopolitical challenge.
It's a story, as many in the Eastern Mediterranean, coloured by mutual suspicion, disputed versions of history and bitter regional rivalry. That is before you consider Lebanon's own delicate communal and confessional balance.
Israel is drilling for gas. Lebanon and Israel, technically at war, now have a fresh dispute - maritime borders. Cyprus and Turkey, with their own long-standing territorial dispute, have rival projects for becoming a gas hub.
-
Business Reporting in Beirut
Wed., October 26, 12:28 PM | Comments ( 0 )
A group of 14 Arab journalists, all of them keen and interested, learned about business reporting and sharpened their writing skills during a 5-day course held in Beirut, on September 26-30, 2011.
The workshop, organised by the Federation of Arab News Agencies (FANA), focused on economic developments and the workings of big and small businesses. The workshop, held at the FANA training centre, with a trainer from Thomson Reuters Foundation, was designed to help journalists work better in a situation of global economic turmoil.
The participants represented oil-exporting and oil importing countries, meaning a hugely different economic reality in their states.
-
North African journalists attend economic and financial reporting workshop
Tue., October 25, 10:00 AM | Comments ( 0 )
A group of 15 journalists from North African countries attended a five-day course on economic and financial reporting in Cairo, Egypt, that focused on foreign direct investment and capital flight. The journalists from Egypt, Sudan, Algeria and Morocco also honed their approach in covering economic and financial news and providing context to readers as part of the course delivered by Thomson Reuters Foundation in partnership with the Norwegian Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The course, delivered by trainers Isa Mubarak and Ghaida Ghantous, utilised presentations, workshops and discussions to cover key topics such as economic indicators, the investment environment and regulations, market movers and investment tools, supply and demand, capital flow as well as corporate financial news.
"I found this course very useful. Since Algeria does not have a real economy with a stock market or financial transparency, I gained new knowledge and learned from the experience of other journalists on the course," said journalist Mohammed Ameziane Bergheul.
Writing skills were honed through practical exercises that focused on accuracy, balance, clarity, sourcing, structure, maintaining focus during a developing story and handling breaking news. The exercises emphasised the need to provide context and background and explain complicated terms and numbers to readers.
On the final day of the course guest speaker Abdel-Fattah El Gibali, deputy director of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, discussed coverage of government budgets and how to measure their impact on economic development and the lives of citizens.
The course also addressed ethics and the legal dangers journalists can face while covering economic and financial news.
Participants were asked to submit a story at the end of course that dealt with an economic or financial issue in their country. -
Women's Health and Opportunity Reporting: Dr Trudy Talks
Thu., October 20, 12:05 PM | Comments ( 2 )
Wednesday proved to be an interesting day for participants attending the Women’s Health and Opportunity reporting course in Johannesburg.
We were focussing on reproductive health, and participants posed questions enthusiastically. It proved to us how the sensitivity of reproductive health issues cuts across nations.
And yes, our speaker Dr. Trudy Smith a Gynaecology oncologist at the University of Witwatersrand did not disappoint, with a style of teaching which was sometimes graphic and direct, but always engaging and informative.
-
Bracing for early elections in Morocco
Thu., September 29, 10:33 AM | Comments ( 1 )
It’s the second day of the Elections Reporting course in Morocco and the conversation is heating up between the journalists. They are discussing the different types of voting abuses and violations that could take place in any election – and their examples all came from Morocco’s previous elections.
“I swear to you there was this one place where the polling station was actually in a mosque. It’s unbelievable! This clearly violates a ban on using religion in election campaigning,” one radio journalist said – to which we all shook our heads in disbelief.
Conversations like this one are not unique to me. I’ve heard them here in Morocco, in Sudan and just last month in Egypt where I also helped run a similar course for their Egyptian colleagues.
-
Cultural differences, mini-movies and black pudding: TRF’s ‘Making TV News’
Thu., September 29, 10:16 AM | Comments ( 0 )
Imagine you've flown seven and a half hours from Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan to London, England. Or ten hours from Venezuela. Or twelve hours from Hong Kong. You didn't sleep well. You've negotiated an English hotel breakfast buffet that included glutinous porridge and a mysterious sausage called black pudding.
If you are not disoriented already, you find yourself carried along in the morning rush-hour crowd heading for Canary Wharf. You are flipped through the revolving door at 30 South Colonnade, and land in a small, windowless training room on the second floor.
You're asked to write a script. Then one of the trainers, the one with a British accent although he says he's Canadian, asks you for money. 'Are you prepared to pay 5 Romanian New Leu, or 7 Venezuelan Bolivar, for each word you just wrote?' Suddenly you are inspired to economise.
-
'Elections Reporting' in Beirut
Mon., September 26, 2:08 PM | Comments ( 0 )
A group of 13 Arab journalists learned about election processes, laws, and sharpened writing skills in a mock election during a 5-day course held in Beirut from 19-23 September 2011.
The workshop, organised by the Federation of Arab News Agencies (FANA), focused on election coverage in a democracy and the media’s role in this process. The workshop, held at the FANA training centre with trainers from the Reuters Foundation, was designed to help journalists prepare for elections in their countries.
Several Arab nations are facing elections this year, with the United Arab Emirates preparing for a poll of the federation's parliament, the Federal National Council, as the journalists met. These are only the second elections in the UAE since independence in 1971, the last being in 2006. Egypt is also in the international spotlight as it prepares to hold parliamentary and presidential elections this year following the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak.
-
Digital war: The fight for the children of the Arab Spring
Thu., September 8, 11:01 PM | Comments ( 0 )
Social media platforms can be a positive driver for activism, while also pushing children into taking sides. In Libya, where I was UNICEF’s Acting Chief of Communication this summer, I witnessed young children being caught up in a propaganda war. Children of all ages will need help to understand and interpret the sound-bites and violent imagery that has surrounded them for over six months. Integrating this response will be vital for Libyans as they rebuild their communities.
The online messaging environment that overall sought a decisive and quick solution to issues not only clashed with the reality of the drawn-out battle -- more than six months of fighting – but also with the largely state directed media and educational curriculum that operated before fighting broke out in February.
Information disseminated by both sides during a conflict is often targeted, brutal and over-simplistic, with little room for dissent as parties strive to control and manipulate information.
-
Chasing Hares in Ukraine
Wed., September 7, 5:23 PM | Comments ( 0 )
The sun is setting as we wind our way down the cobbled streets of Andriyivskyy Descent, the “Montmartre of Kiev.” A drunk is jostling a market trader selling souvenirs to tourists, three dogs are trotting past in the twilight and a couple glide into a café opposite the steps of an Orthodox church.
We turn back up the rutted incline and my guide Tatiana shows me a sculpture of two characters --a man and woman -- from a popular Ukrainian film comedy "Running after Two Hares.”
The main character, a bankrupt hairdresser by all accounts, is torn between two women, one rich and one beautiful. “If you run after two hares,” the saying goes, “you’ll catch neither.”
-
Cairo’s Facebook generation gets to grips with Westminster
Fri., August 5, 10:11 AM | Comments ( 0 )
For the Cairo students, it was a far cry from Tahrir Square. There were no stick-wielding men riding camels and nofrantic pro-democracy protestors hurtling toppled metal barricades. Instead, there were clerks in horse-hair wigs, a speaker’s procession with a ceremonial mace and MPscordially discussing work and pension reform. From the public gallery of the House of Commons, the old ways of Westminster seemed light years away from Egypt’s aspirations for a new era ofdemocracy.
While Westminster’s quaint ways clearly intrigued the 12 Mass Communications students from Cairo’s MISR International University (MIU) participating in a five day media training course at the Thomson Reuters Foundation in London, what truly astonished one student was that the public were allowed inside parliament at all.
The students, 10 women and two men in their early 20s, never missed an opportunity during breaks in their training to connect on Facebook with their friends and family back home, highlighting the significant role played by social networking sites during the revolution which swept Hosni Mubarak from power.
-
Maputo parliamentary staff polish up their training skills in interactive workshop
Wed., August 3, 3:06 PM | Comments ( 0 )
A succession of budding public speakers stepped into the spotlight in Mozambique’s parliament complex early in July to deliver powerful presentations and take part in challenging debates about effective education. The orators this time were not the usual occupants of the political debating chamber, but 15 parliamentary officials taking part in a practical workshop on designing and delivering compelling training for their teams.
The 15 officials from the Maputo parliament spent three intensive days learning about the theory and practice of effective training, from the science of adult learning to trainer tactics for making workshops stimulating and fun.
Organised by Thomson Reuters Foundation and Westminster Foundation For Democracy, the course aims to equip policy and legal specialists with the hands-on skills to spread their expertise through self-designed learning programmes and workshops for their parliamentary departments.
-
Lagos by Night
Fri., July 8, 10:59 AM | Comments ( 2 )
It was when the dark water lapped over the back seat of the saloon car taking me to Murtala Muhammed airport that I truly understood how there are good ways to die and there are absurd ways to die.
“Veteran British journalist drowned on Apapa Expressway in freak accident.”
I could see the six-paragraph stories in the Lagos papers – surely the circumstances of my passing would deserve more than a news-brief? My surname would inevitably be misspelt but what would I care?
-
Media Training ‘Plus’
Mon., July 4, 4:27 PM | Comments ( 0 )
You know, it’s hard being an NGO or IGO in a time of recession. People have less money and there’s that iPad that has to be bought instead of giving to good causes. In today’s digital age, making a connection, forming an opinion and then driving some sort of action, even if it is just sparing a few pennies, is difficult. It takes time, effort and innovation. It takes strategic communication.
So when UNHCR were planning their latest global strategic communication campaign, the ‘One’ Campaign, they started really thinking strategically, especially in the Middle East. The campaign was, and is, impressive - a comprehensive and coordinated patchwork of messages, images, merchandise, video spots, social media platforms and even QR codes. For a communicator, it is a thing of beauty. Yet, the UNHCR hub in Dubai appreciated that all this wizardry would flounder if it wasn’t supplemented with real traditional media engagement with real people – true strategic communication across the spectrum.
The Thomas twins (James and Jem – yes, it is confusing and, no, they’re not real twins) were despatched to Dubai to conduct media training. Nothing unusual in that - it’s what Thomson Reuters Foundation does. But increasingly our training isn’t just media training. It’s media and communication training in the wider context of strategic communication in a digital world.
-
Pushing the "Middle East Envelope"
Wed., June 22, 10:59 AM | Comments ( 0 )
Training journalists from the Middle East how to hone their craft has taken on new meaning for me ever since the “Arab Spring “of popular revolts swept through the region, toppling dictators and challenging absolute monarchies and regimes.
The protests and uprisings have also provided an exciting and realistic backdrop to lectures and exercises on objectivity, accuracy and safety of the reporter while reporting violent events.
It has also propped up the role of journalists as civil society watchdogs, who expose all angles of a story including any transgressions by governments or their opposing forces, while they themselves remain neutral.
-
Ouch! This journalism stuff hurts
Fri., May 27, 1:17 PM | Comments ( 0 )
There’s a reason journalists are referred to as wordsmiths. My latest training course was witness to numerous battles with words, as participants, trainers and sub-editors employed their own strategies to forge mere language into news stories. I listened to people desperately reading their embryonic headlines out loud, hoping vocalisation will help (it often does); I watched people trawling endlessly through the dictionary for the perfect word; and I overheard arguments about the nuance of a particular term. I entered into a spirited debate over the difference between fraud, theft and embezzlement – with hasty consulting of the nearest “Law for Journalists” type of book. Several people were clustered around their drug of choice – coffee or cigarettes – with expressions of anguish as they shared the pain.
Sometimes we manage to craft the perfect story, with a lead that sings, where no word is wasted, no double meanings creep in and no ironclad rule is flouted. Sometimes we don’t, and can be seen walking the halls in frustration when the words just won’t be bent to our will. But everyone keeps trying, from the least experienced training participant to the most experienced editor, and partly that’s what I want everyone to learn: that this process is difficult. After all, we are trying to bring news stories into the world – and we all know that giving birth hurts.
(By Lisa Essex, long-suffering trainer, sub-editor, and journalist)
About this blog
Blogs from our team of journalism trainers on their thoughts and experiences as they travel the world.
