Thomson Reuters Foundation
A Delegation from Maghreb Arab Press on their first visit to London in October 2012/ A Thomson Reuters Foundation photo.
In October 2012, Thomson Reuters Foundation hosted eight editorial executives and senior journalists from Maghreb Arab Press (MAP), the Moroccan state news agency, on a four-day visit to London to meet counterparts from Thomson Reuters and the BBC and to exchange ideas on editorial practice. The programme included a visit to St James’s Palace, giving the delegation from Morocco, a constitutional monarchy, a valuable insight into the way the British royal family’s communication advisers handle the media.
The visit highlighted some of the challenges ahead as MAP makes the transition from a subsidised state news agency with little competition to a partially self-funding producer of multimedia news for a commercial market. The London programme was the beginning of the Foundation’s three-year project working with journalists from MAP and other Moroccan media organisations in partnership with Institut Supérieur de l’Information et de la Communication (ISIC), a highly respected journalism school, and the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The first year of the project focused on exchange visits between London and Rabat for MAP management and the Foundation’s consultants. The feedback on the visits from the Moroccan delegation was very positive. “What was useful for me was the interaction between MAP and Thomson Reuters teams, which turned each working session into a real exchange of ideas and experience from two different approaches,” said Noureddine Zouini, MAP News Editor and Deputy Director of Information.
The next step was to provide Moroccan journalists from MAP and other news outlets with the opportunity to develop their professional skills with a series of training courses led by veteran former Reuters journalists. Our training courses simulated a real working environment to provide participants with the opportunity to hone their skills and learn the latest reporting techniques across a variety of media platforms including online, print and video. Drawing on the experience and knowledge of specialised Reuters trainers, the courses covered key topics of interest to the Moroccan media.
We ran a total number of seven courses from April 2013 to March 2014, four of which were for MAP journalists and the other three aimed at improving the reporting skills of other Moroccan journalists. The workshops included reporting on business and the economy, multimedia and graphics, investigative journalism and parliamentary reporting. Each course provided the participants with a firm foundation in the basics of journalism and focused on a topic pertinent to the work of the media in Morocco. The Foundation also ran a ‘Train the Trainers’ course for staff in both ISIC and MAP’s training departments so this crucial journalism training could continue beyond the lifespan of the project.
The ambition of the project is to promote independent reporting on government and politics in Morocco so that public officials and institutions would be held to greater account. Our focus was particularly on supporting MAP in its transition to a more transparent reporting culture. We were encouraged by the enthusiasm of journalists to embrace the notion of change. “The [course] trainers taught us how to write brief and concise stories in order to please different types of readers,” said Youssef Oukhallou, one of MAP’s financial journalists. “I found it very useful that the courses teach us transferable techniques in a way that many MAP journalists have improved the quality of their reports by applying these techniques as well as teaching each other how to use them.”
As the project developed, the Foundation reached out to journalists outside MAP, most of them based in the capital Rabat and the port city of Casablanca. Our aim now is to expand the project to reach journalists from across Morocco with specialised journalism training. This year we will be offering specialised workshops in new media and social networking, photojournalism, newsroom management and TV reporting for both MAP and non-MAP journalists.
Partnerships with ISIC and the UK’s FCO have underpinned the project, which is expected to run until March 2015. ISIC identified journalists to attend courses and sometimes provided teaching staff to support our own trainers, while the FCO provided essential financial support.
