This is my story

Journalists in the making

We train local journalists living in conflict zones on print and multimedia skills.

Why?

The increasingly globalized use of the new technologies has opened informative windows into war-torn areas such as Iraq, Libya, Syria … In 2011, the outbreak of the so-called “Arab Spring” in the Middle East and North Africa regions led to a flood of images, most of which were taken from mobile phones and uploaded to social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter.

A decade later, photos and videos keep coming out in a tidal wave from which it is often difficult to extract the story that someone seeks to tell. It´s mainly local activists who, as such, do not succeed in being echoed by the international media because their work doesn´t match the general parameters of journalistic speech (objectivity, balance between sources, etc.). This said, most of the stories we get from the ground through still come through foreign correspondents or independent journalists who are often unfamiliar with the key issues in the MENA region. Moreover, trends within the sector lead to a chain of similar stories which end up feeding each other, something which eventually distorts the complex reality one is meant to tell the readership.

Training people living in ground zero on the basics of journalism will allow them to tell the story of a region they know well to an international audience and, eventually, get paid for it. Moreover, it will also contribute to a greater hygiene in journalism as a whole.

How?

The activity will be developed during five full days and in groups of ten people. At the end of the course, the students will be familiar the storytelling framing of both short and long-form documentaries and print articles. It’s about how to capture the essence of a story and the transformation of hard data into even harder narratives, all before moving to the art of the cultivated pitch.

Who

Our lecturers are professional journalists who work as reporters, photographers or camera operators in hostile environments. Their work has been published by the world´s leading newspapers, news agencies and TV channels such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, BBC, CNN, AP, AFP… Among several awards we can list two Emmy Awards (documentary), One World (documentary), Chris Hondros Memorial Award (photography), Picture of the Year (photography), NAB Reporting Award (journalism) and several other distinctions.