The Kurdish magazine Lveen in Northern Iraq has made considerable progress after an on-the-job training in May organised by Press Now and the Independent Media Centre in Kurdistan(IMCK). Since the training, which focused on improving reporting skills, staff organisation and design, circulation has gone up 20 percent. Moreover, the Lveen staff has increased reporting on social issues and is setting up a database to sell the magazine online.

The training of the Lveen magazine, which has a staff of about ten journalists, took place between 16-26 May in Sulaymaniyah, a city in the Northeast of Iraq. Trainer was Robert Slagt, a freelance journalist who earlier worked on print media training projects for Press Now in Albania, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Macedonia. The Lveen staff worked hard on developing more variation in genres, civil journalism and professionalizing both format and cover design.

 

An evaluation after six weeks showed the training had a positive effect. For the two Lveen issues published directly after the training, circulation had gone up from 18.000 copies to 22.000. The staff had implemented most of the Press Now suggestions, such as covering more social issues, reducing the number of Q&A interviews and including short news in the first pages of the magazine.

 

The editor in chief of Lveen, Ahmad Mera, said: “We have implemented 90 percent of the suggested changes we discussed in the training. We knew how much we needed this training.” Lveen has also increased its advertising income, based on the techniques they learned from the Press Now training. Furthermore, they are following up on the idea to sell Lveen magazine online for international readers, for which purpose they are setting up a database. Lveen has also asked for more training support from the IMCK in Sulaymaniyah, run by Dutch journalist Judit Neurink.

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23-7-2008