JTP Equips Journalists with Survival and Management Skills

During September, AUB's Journalism Training Program (JTP) held two training workshops, one on war coverage/safety for journalists (September 18-20) and the other on newsroom management (September 24-26).

During the first workshop, eager Arab reporters filled AUB's Reuters Newsroom to participate in the training program on war coverage/safety for journalists aimed at preparing them for dangerous assignments and arming them with survival skills.

"A very interesting theme; it should have follow-up training," commented Marie-Claire Feghali of Lebanon's An-Nahar daily.

Her assessment was echoed by 15 other journalists, who attended the workshop conducted by former CNN chief news executive and president of newsgathering Eason Jordan, who orchestrated the network's award-winning reporting of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, and Somalia.

Jordan also directed CNN's coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, and later went on to found and run Praedict, a war zone-focused news company.

"This workshop is on a par with, if not exceeds, training courses I've attended in the United States and Britain," said participant Suha Zeineddine of the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

In addition to videos on safety measures, health issues, and post-traumatic stress disorder, discussions during the trailblazing workshop centered on ethics in war coverage, humanitarian organizations, and children in conflict zones. The training grouped reporters from Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia representing the various prominent Arab dailies in the Middle East region.

The second workshop in September?the fourth in a series of events sponsored by the Dutch embassy in Lebanon- switched gears to decision makers in print, broadcast, and on-line media. Focusing on newsroom management, it featured Neil Skene, who has thirty years of experience as a journalist, editor, and corporate executive.

Skene was senior vice president and editor-in-chief of Individual Inc., a pioneer in personalized news delivered online and through corporate intranets, who spent years as president of Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Inc., the Washington-based publisher of print and electronic services about legislative affairs. Under his leadership, CQ doubled its revenues and changed its organizational structure and production processes to integrate electronic and print publishing.

The newsroom management course targeted mid-to-upper-level participants from Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia representing various TV and other information agencies, including AUB's Information and Public Relations Office.

Topics at that workshop included organization of the newsroom, relationship of the publisher/editor-in-chief, citizen journalism and social editing, ethics, multiplatform newspapers, design trends, newsroom re-engineering, paper-on-line convergence, marketing, and advertising.

Althogh half the participants recognized the transforming role of new and multi-media in a converged world, they said they would like to receive more training dealing primarily with broadcast newsrooms.