Al Jazeera: Broadcasting skills for a competitive news environment

Thomson Foundation trainer Deborah Kelly has just returned to the UK from Qatar where she has completed two training courses at the Al Jazeera Training Centre working with journalists and producers from across the Arab world.

News Bulletin Production Course 3 February to 7 February 2013

Eleven journalists, many from the Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, joined Deborah and translator Assad for the five-day course on news-bulletin production. Many of the journalists had some experience in producing television news bulletins and wanted to improve their story selection and running-order construction, but for others it was their first opportunity to produce their own news bulletins.

It also provided an opportunity for the local journalists to view bulletins produced on the worlds numerous news channels and compare how they select their own running orders and the techniques and formats they employ. With an increasing number of channels producing news programming in Arabic, the journalists were anxious to ensure they were writing to high standards and in an informative and compelling form.

New challenges During the course, the students looked at long form and short form bulletins. They explored the use of graphics and the importance of effective strap and ticker writing.

With the expansion of existing news channels and the creation of new ones, many of the journalists said they are being challenged to be more creative in the production of their news bulletins but at the same time want to maintain high ethical standards in their journalism. These challenges prompted a great deal of informed and interesting debate during the five-day course.

Planning and television production course 10 February to 20 February 2013

Youve a great idea for a new television programme, an issue that cries out to be made into a documentary, or need to plan material for a new magazine programme; How do you make sure everything goes smoothly from planning to production?

This was the challenge that the 11 students taking part in the planning and television production course run by Thomson Foundation trainer Deborah Kelly tackled during a recent ten day course at the Al Jazeera Training Centre in Doha, Qatar.

The students representing a variety of television channels from across the Arabic world examined television programming from planning, to pitching, production and critical review. Discussions took place around programmes as diverse as the BBCs latest format success, The Great British Bake Off, Indian Televisions talk show, Satyamev Jayate, and Al Jazeeras highly successful chat show, The Opposite Direction.

Tough critics Senior members of staff at Al Jazeera, including commissioning editor, Rawan Al Damen, and talk show producer, Montaser Marai, talked about their experiences in programme production. The toughest critics for the students were their fellow class members who they had to impress when pitching their ideas for programmes.

The course culminated in the production of a half hour chat show with audience participation and use of social media. The students worked in two production teams and shared the production and presentation roles.

One team chose to explore aspects of the conflict in Syria whilst the second looked at the growing issue of obesity and how sport is being promoted to tackle the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of children. Both teams invited guests to contribute, but the team producing the sport based show had the added benefit of being able to use the course translator Assad who, when he is not working at the training centre, is the senior translator for the Al Jazeera Sport Channel.

New opportunities The broadcast industry in the Middle East has been flourishing and expanding at a fast rate since the "Arab Spring" with many more opportunities opening up for journalists and producers.

"It was a great to be with such enthusiastic and talented people," said trainer, Deborah Kelly. "I am certain their skills and new understanding of the medium will translate into producing innovative and informative television productions."

LINK:	http://www.thomsonfoundation.org/news-and-features/2013/03/04/al-jazee...
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