ICFJ's Business Journalism Program at Tsinghua University Featured on CIMA Report

By: Kendall McCabe | 09/25/2014

A new report from the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) says investigative business journalism is improving in China, thanks in part to the efforts of the International Center For Journalists (ICFJ).

In 2007, ICFJ launched the Global Business Journalism Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing— the only program of its kind on the Chinese mainland.

Since the program started, “The business press has improved markedly,” ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan said in the CIMA report. “Business reporters ask tough questions now.”

The application process for the program, which is taught in English, is highly competitive. About 40 students from China and other countries are accepted annually. Graduates leave Tsinghua with crucial skills and connections that enhance their reporting careers.

Top business journalists teach in the program, and students have access to a lab with Bloomberg computer terminals that display up-to-the-minute financial data. The terminals normally are available only to industry experts.

The Global Business Journalism Program’s curriculum is supplemented with regular seminars, trips and hands-on workshops. The result is a student body that is grounded in the basics of global financial journalism and exposed to sophisticated research, reporting and storytelling techniques.

Jane Sasseen, executive director of the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, taught financial journalism at Tsinghua. She says Chinese authorities “understand they need more economically -literate reporters who can write about the economy… global trade and how the global economy works,”

News Category

Press Mention

Topics

Critical-Issues Reporting

Latest News

A Reporter's Guide to The History of Tariffs

For most of human history, governments have taxed goods crossing their borders. Tariffs — taxes levied on imports or exports — have financed empires, protected domestic industries, and punished foreign rivals. They’ve sparked wars, crashed economies, and redefined alliances. Yet today’s tariff war between the United States and the world doesn’t fit neatly into any of the old molds. Rather than being a tool to nurture domestic industry or fill government coffers, tariffs are now being wielded as weapons in a sprawling contest over global power and economic dominance.

Hans Staiger Award Winner Investigates Russian Soldiers Secretly Treated in Belarus Hospitals, Including Those Linked to War Crimes

Leaked data from the Russian Defense Ministry shook the story loose. A team of investigators found that during the first 21 months of the invasion of Ukraine, nearly 1,000 Russian soldiers were treated at Belarusian hospitals, including war crime suspects. These “secret patients,” as they were known, directly tied Belarus to Moscow’s war effort.

I Blew Up on TikTok with Journalism — Here's How You Can, Too

l'll never forget the day when an editor at the BBC told a 25-year-old me that journalists shouldn’t be on TikTok because “there’s so much misinformation on there.” By that point, I had maybe 10,000 followers on the platform, possibly more, and the comment stung. My TikToks, which had amplified my journalism as well as my passion for learning new languages, were well researched and I hoped the direct opposite of misinformation.