INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

Editors in chief of Iraqi media visited on March 14th the workshop 'Women on the front pages!'. IMCK and international trainer Harriet Salm presented a two newspapers (with two front pages) in Kurdish and Arabic covering only women issues made by the female participants. The main goal was to convince and make the editors in chief aware of the importance of women issues on the front pages of newspapers. Women as an extra target group (almost 60 percent of all Iraqi's is female) can be the cause of an increase in revenues by selling more copies. The editors in chief or representatives present on the last day of the workshop were Karwan Anwar (PUK media), Cheman Musa (Avro), Abdul Razaq (Paymner), Luqman Ghafur (Kurdistani Nwe) and Adnan Said Husen (Rudaw). After seven days of training thirteen female participants were rewarded with an IMCK certificate. They learned how to write for a broader public, and how to recognize women stories that are worthy of the front...

International trainer Dan Mason on February 10, 2012 started a 3 day workshop on marketing with Kurdistani Nwe, the newspaper of one of the two main Kurdish parties PUK. Mason works with the management, editor in chief and the editors on making the paper attractive for bigger target groups and thus making it more interesting for advertisers. The training takes place in the offices of Kurdistani Nwe. Mason is a seasoned British journalist, who has worked for different media, also as an editor in chief, and who has trained extensively all over the world, mainly for the Reuters/Thomson Foundation.

IMCK-director Judit Neurink was invited on the 9th of January 2012 to speak at a conference held by Kurdistani Nwe. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the Kurdish newspaper. Present besides IMCK were the editors-in-chief of the four main newspapers in Kurdistan. From left to right on the picture below: Stran Abdulla (Kurdistani Nwe), Kemal Raoof (Hawlati), Shwan Mohammed (Awena), the moderator and Judit Neurink with IMCK-translator Yad Raoof Jalal. Not seen on the picture is Ako Mohammed of Rudaw newspaper.  The invitees talked about the challenges that journalism and media face, now and in the future. One topic of concern was the growing competition by the Internet. Judit Neurink focused among other things in her speech on the difficulties of getting young people interested in journalism in Kurdistan. Watch the video below to see the speech.

IMCK director and senior trainer Judit Neurink conducted a lecture for the news staff of Kurdistani Nwe in Sulaymaniya, on December 2, 2010. She talked about the differences between media in the West, and those in Kurdistan. Main differences, she said, are the fact that most journalists in Kurdistan feel they have a political role, and that most media have a connection to political parties. And this leads to content in the media that mainly cover politics. Western media focuss much more on people stories, and work with civil journalism.

Liesbeth van War-merdam started a workshop on design for IMCK with PUK-newspaper Kurdistani Nwe. The workshop, which started at the offices of the newspaper in Sulaymaniya on Saturday June 20, will last 5 days. Van Warmerdam is a freelance designer, who worked with the Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool. She will advise the designers of Kurdistani Nwe on modernising their design and rearranging the front page. The on-the-job training was made possible thanks to funding through the American reconstruction fund.