More advanced investigations and final feedback

The training ended well on Friday with a group photo session and exchange of contacts for those not knowing each other from before.

On the last day of the training, the participants were working on some more advanced journalistic research assignments, searching for background information from resources in the internet, and producing stories.

Here are the topics they could choose from:

Kenyan blogs
Visit some Kenyan blogs, such as Afrigadget, Gathara’s World, Mentalacrobatics, Kenyan Pundit, Thinker’s Room, or A Kenyan Urban Narrative.
Describe some of the blogs and their content and compare them with popular Tanzanian blogs.

Lord’s Resistance Army
It was announced last weekend that the United States is about to send troops to Uganda and neighbouring countries to help fight the LRA rebels.
Tell more about LRA.
You can also quote John Ochola’s testimony for BBC in 2006.

New Libya
Amnesty International last week published a report about thousands of people that have been detained and tortured by the new authorities in Libya.
Explain the background of the situation in Libya, give a short timeline of developments this year, and tell about the basic findings of the Amnesty report.

This time we first went through together how to find good websites to provide information to the stories. We discussed what search words to use, how to open new pages in new tabs while continuing to read the original page, and I also reminded the participants that they could print some of their source pages and underline and make notes instead of copying anything directly to their draft stories.

The Ugandan rebel army LRA was the most popular topic. Here’s the story by Edward Kinabo who describes the LRA as “a very confusing rebel group with a very confusing ideological mission”. Here’s another LRA story by Amina Mollel, and here’s a piece written by Celina Matuja from Radio Tumaini.

Comparing some of the more narrative Kenyan blogs with popular Tanzanian photo blogs was the topic chosen by Bilham Kimati and Felix Mwagara.

And here’s Noor Shija’s article about the reported human rights abuses in post-Gaddafi Libya. Gaddafi’s brutal death and torture was the biggest news here too since Thursday, and the Tanzanian government was one of the first countries which outrightly condemned the extrajudicial killing.

At the end of the training the participants filled in an assessment questionnaire and also published their final feedback from the training days.

Most of them say the training was very useful for themselves and also for all other participants.

“Now I know how much easier investigative journalism can be if the internet search tools are employed effectively”, says Amina Mollel from TBC. “It is my real hope that this training will be of much help to me, particularly for doing more research for my programmes.”

Others however suggest that the training should be longer. Noor Shija recommends that this training should last for one month or two. “We miss a lot of knowledge. We need to know much about journalism, so that we can manage to change our journalistic style in the country”, he concludes.

Personally, I would also want to thank all participants for good motivation and very active debates through the training days. Many thanks also to the whole MISA staff, especially information officer Gasirigwa Sengiyumwa who took care of all arrangements at the venue and acting director Andrew Marawiti for the pre-training coordination. Thanks to TGDLC too for the stylish venue and effective IT support. Thanks also to the girls at the catering for the morning teas and lunch.