The training started on March 1st after the introduction speeches held by Ruken Baris from Press Now and Nadire Mater from IPS Communication Foundation. The participant journalists mentioned the difficulties of attracting readers and collecting advertisements as the main reasons for their financial problems. Moreover they explained the difficulties of making news about local authorities and businessmen in fear of retaliation.
During the following sessions the trainers have specifically focused on how to cover local issues in a more creative way and used the experiences of local/regional media in Turkey and in different parts of the world in order to depict different styles in local journalism. Esra Arsan provided examples of good & bad journalism from national and local media in Turkey and informed the participants about creating special news items out of routine news while Nico Haasbroek urged the journalists to think beyond the agenda journalism and gave tips about conducting good interviews. Yücel Tunca focussed on how photos could contribute to the quality of the news articles and advised participants to be more creative and selective when taking photos, trying to do more than just displaying talking heads of the local VIPs.
