Syrian journalists based in Doha were invited to attend a three-day workshop hosted by the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF) at the Wyndham hotel.
This training session was part of DCMF’s regional mission to teach journalists in the Arab world new media techniques. 17 Syrians from different media attended the course to improve their web writing skills.
Instructor Mokhtar El Aballaoui said “the workshop can help participants analyse the difficulties and issues in their work”. “Web journalism offers new opportunities compared to traditional media, as the Internet user can access a newspaper archive at any time of the day, thanks to system structuring data according to the themes of the articles” El Aballahoui added.
Web-based media offer the public more interactivity than other media as readers are also expected to contribute content. The workshop showed the different roles journalists, editors and editors in chief hold and their accountability when working on assignment. The participants were also taught about image reproduction rights.
On the closing day, Jan Keulen, director of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, thanked the attendees and invited them to always adopt professional ethics in their work. Keulen said “this workshop is the first of this kind and we wish this experience will be renewed in the future”.
Qatar-based Syrian citizen journalist Mohamed Abdullah told DCMF “the workshop showed me I was wrong when it comes to elaborating and writing press articles, but also time management”.
A female activist who attended the workshop said it was “very important for me, especially for building my reports”.
She told us she started working in the media at the start of the Syrian revolution. She founded a newspaper in October 2011, but was forced to leave Syria shortly after.
This article was translated from French
