Central Asia: April '07

A seminar aimed at training young journalists to report for IWPR’s News Briefing Central Asia, NBCA, took place in the third week of April in Almaty, Kazakhstan.



Launched in August last year, NBCA provides a unique perspective on major developments in Central Asia, with daily news analysis stories focusing on countries in the region and the region as a whole.



Since the service began, the project team has been gradually building up capacity, training up contributors and developing a network of analysts and commentators. There has also been an emphasis on promoting the service. As a result, there have been substantial increases in page impressions in the NBCA section of the website (up from 56,000 in January to 74,000 in March).



The training on April 20-21 brought together journalists who will be the core of the IWPR network in Kazakstan.



Seminar participants received practical training in how to explain the news, the key component of NBCA-style reporting.



Many journalism graduates in Central Asia, and Kazakstan in particular, do not get practical experience at university. IWPR seminars are designed to give them an opportunity to practice their journalistic skills in a real working environment.



At the Almaty seminar, the trainees learnt about story selection, how to conduct an interview and the key elements of analysis. With IWPR's apprentice-style training programmes, trainees are encouraged to start producing stories immediately after completing a course. And in the week following the training session, two of the new writers contributed to NBCA reports.



Many participants noted that working on NBCA stories was like having to do a crash course on a specific topic, as they had to research it thoroughly before asking the expert in the field. Some of the trainees expressed a wish to specialise in particular aspects of NBCA reporting, such as financial journalism.



The trainees all said they would like to see more opportunities for Kazak journalists to learn how to write objectively, as few local media encourage such an approach. In Kazakstan, reporters still work according to principles of Soviet-style journalism whereby journalists present their own opinions, rather than try to write balanced reports citing a range of views.