Orkhan Jabbarli interview: On screen in Azerbaijan

Orkhan Jabbarli, a newsreader on one of Azerbaijan's main television channels, visited London in April for journalism training at the Thomson Foundation. We caught up with him to talk about the visit, differences between newsrooms in the UK and Azerbaijan and his life as a journalist.

I work for the people who are in front of the television sets, says Orkhan Jabbarli, a newsreader on Azerbaijan's Public TV. When I am in front of the camera I forget all of my problems. I become the person who the audience wants to see.

Orkhan's role includes covering the latest news in Azerbaijan and also preparing special reports. He also has an editing role for one day a week.

As a geographer by profession, he had not received a formal training as a journalist. He says that the business journalism programme run by the Thomson Foundation and the British Council, funded by Pasha Bank, was a great opportunity for him to have an education in journalism skills.

The programme that Orkhan and the other journalists participated in was focused on business reporting. Some of the course was devoted to specialist business journalism skills, while other parts covered social media.

Business opportunities Nowadays the development of the private sector in Azerbaijan creates conditions that increase the opportunities for business, says Orkhan. There is a need for journalists to learn how to access business information and how to report it.

Orkhan says, in Azerbaijan, business stories are very often based on press releases, and the language of these releases does not appeal to television audiences. He says the course helped him to rewrite this language in a way that would work better for television.

I can say that I have learned in the field of business journalism how to get the information, how to report it and, in addition, I have learned enough about the essentials in social media.

I have already begun to use these and I share what I have learned with my colleagues.

Orkhan says that he has been told by people he meets that his persona off-air is very different to how he comes across in front of the camera. But he says that this feedback actually gives him confidence about the authority he conveys as a news reader.

Strict' persona Although I am friendly while communicating with people, most of the time I am obliged to be strict as a news announcer. In short, pretending like an actor.

During his visit to the UK, the journalists visited newsrooms at ITN, the Guardian and the Financial Times. Orkhan says it was quite a different experience from being in an Azerbaijani newsroom, observing that UK newsrooms are very large by comparison.

But he adds that their size is to be expected. We have a population of nine million but British journalists work for a population of ten times more than the population of our country.

Orkhan, the geographer-turned-newsreader, has one main piece of advice for budding journalists: ability is more important than what you know in journalism. It's possible to gain that knowledge later, he notes.

LINK:	http://www.thomsonfoundation.org/news-and-features/2013/05/16/orkhan-j...
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