International news

Writing International news course in London

By Paul Iredale

A visit to the glittering studios of Al Jazeera was on offer during a two week Writing International News workshop for 10 young journalists run by the Foundation at Reuters London headquarters in June.

The group was given a tour of the state-of-the-art studios and heard news anchor Stephen Cole explain the editorial policies of the station.The 10 journalists, from Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Rwanda, Bulgaria, Russia, Moldova, Kosovo and Jamaica, also received a virtual tour of the Internet from former Reuters editor Peter Bale, now Executive Producer of Microsoft’s UK Online Services Group.

During the workshop, the group heard presentations and wrote exercises reinforcing ethics and international standards, sourcing and balance, election coverage, and interview techniques under the guidance of trainers Paul Iredale and Peter Gregson.

They also met with a number of Reuters journalists, including Lloyd Watson, who led them through an exercise on news judgements in covering a breaking television story and Quentin Webb, who introduced them to covering economic news. Tim Large and Mark Snelling of the Foundation’s Alertnet team showed them the journalistic tools now in place on the disaster relief website and talked about the challenges of covering aid stories.

http://www.reuterslink.org/news/WINLondon_may2007.htm