A new corps of trainers is teaching best practices

Less than a week after participating in an ICFJ “training of trainers” session in early February, reporter Fakhar Durrani of Dunya News was already leading a workshop on journalism ethics in his Islamabad newsroom. He’s also helping to draft his organization’s first code of ethics.

Durrani is one of 13 Pakistani journalists who participated in the three-day session, held as part the U.S.-Pakistan Professional Partnership in Journalism Program.

A survey conducted by Knight International Journalism Fellow Jorge Luis Sierra shows that Mexican journalists and bloggers are at great risk of cyber-espionage, email-account hacking and other serious digital threats. The highly sensitive nature of most of the topics they cover (such as crime, corruption, violence and human rights issues) make them even more vulnerable.

During her year-long partnership at La Nación, one of the most important newspapers in Argentina, Knight International Journalism Fellow Sandra Crucianelli helped take data journalism to the next level. In a country that lacks open data and easy access to public information, she assembled a flexible team at the paper that combined best journalism practices with data visualization and savvy marketing techniques to tell better stories.

The Russia-U.S. Young Media Professionals Exchange Program was a key initiative that came about after talks between our two countries’ presidents in 2010 to improve our relationship. Russian and U.S. journalists met several times to discuss the best possible program and came up with this exciting exchange. It is designed to help young reporters, at this formative stage in their careers, gain a real grasp of what is taking place on the ground.