Foreign Correspondent Training Course, January 2012 - overview

Dates: January 3-11, 2012
Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Some 15 journalists and journalism students participated in the winter 2012 TOL Foreign Correspondent Training Course.

They were introduced to the essential skills of international reporting by a team of experienced journalists (BBC, The Economist, New York Times, AP, Sky News...) and each completed a practical reporting assignment under the guidance of the trainers.

What did they learn?

• how to break into foreign reporting;
• finding your feet in a foreign country;
• pitching your ideas to editors;
• when, and why, you should bypass official sources of information;
• finding the story no one else has;
• staying safe in dangerous and unpredictable places;
• common mistakes that even seasoned professionals make;
• and much more!

Story-writing project
Participants completed a practical story-writing project, an important part of the course – researching, writing and filing a story from Prague under the guidance of the trainers.

Trainers
The January 2012 TOL Foreign Correspondent course training team included the BBC's Rob Cameron; freelance photojournalist Dean Cox; freeleance journalist Michael Jordan; Nikolay Pavlov from RFE/RL, and David Rennie of The Economist.

Social and cultural programme
In addition to the training sessions, we arranged a few social activities, including a welcome and farewell dinners, as well as an evening concert.

Who attended the course?
Participants included young journalists and journalism students from all over the world - Canada, Italy, Kenya, Moldova, New Zealand, Russia, the USA and Uzbekistan.

This course was held in January 2012. Click here for a list of forthcoming TOL Training courses.