INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

Two IMCK trainers in Baghdad started on October 13 a five day workshop on Writing a News Reportage. This civil journalism workshop was attended by eight young journalists from different media outlets in Baghdad. Trainers are Kholoud al-Amery and Duraid Salman, who have been trained as trainers by IMCK. The main subjects of the workshop are: what is news, basic elements of making a good news story, how to make a news reportage, and how to conduct an interview for news and reportage.

Some 30 journalists in Kifri, at the border of Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, started a 5 day workshop in civil journalism. On March 16 an IMCK-trainings team that had come down from Sulaymaniya, opened the course at the library of Kifri. Senior trainers Khidr Domle and Judit Neurink were joined by Adrian Roling (chief editor at the NOS-Journaal in the Netherlands) and Abdullah Samir, himself from Kifri. Participants are working for TV and different print media in Kifri. IMCK-intern Jenda Terpstra also participated in the training.

IMCK has trained five new co-trainers for its workshops on basic journalism and civil journalism. Senior trainers Xdir Domle and Shwan Muhamed took three days (4-6 December 2008) to extend their knowledge on training to the new candidates. Abdullah Sabir, Nawzad Jamal, Shahnaz Zebary, Mohsin Adib and Ako Muhammed will be assistant trainers in the workshops IMCK is organizing in the coming months.

The Independent Media Centre will bring experienced European journalists to Kurdistan, who want to share their knowledge with their Kurdish colleagues. Teaching will be done mostly in workshops, and part of the trainings will take place at the training hall of the Media Centre in Sulaymaniya. On the job training course will of course mainly take place at the media premises The Independent Media Centre in Kurdistan is working with a combination of Dutch (and international) and Kurdish trainers. These are the bridge between the European trainer and the Kurdish journalists. This way the Media Centre in the future will have formed its own supply of Kurdish trainers, who will also train new trainers. The centre will be working in co ordinance with Kurdish institutes on education of journalists.

Civil journalism is putting people central in reporting. What are the results of (new) policy for the people, for Sosan and Serdar? How do people feel about changes? 4000 kids who have a heart problem is bigger news than strife inside one of the parties. Kids playing in dirty water and getting ill, as well. So are the problems of Asians coming to do the dirty work in Kurdistan, and the consequences for Kurdish labor. Civil journalism puts people first, and politics at their service. It makes media more interesting for their consumers, because they find stories about their own lives. This amounts to papers being sold and read better, radio being listened to more frequently and TV being watched with more interest.

The Independent Media Centre in Kurdistan was founded in May 2008 and is supported by the Dutch ngo’s Press Now and Democracy and Media. Funding is both Dutch, international and Kurdish. Its main office is in Sulaymaniya, but the centre also has offices in Duhok and Irbil. Press Now started training civil journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2004, and has since trained a few hundred journalists from different media (radio, TV, print). The Media Centre will extend the work started by Press Now, giving equal time and energy to journalists from different backgrounds - political, social, religious and ethnic.