INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE KURDISTAN

July 15, IMCK started its second week in the training of Kurdish female graduates in the basics of civil and professional journalism. Fifteen participants attend the second week that focuses on how to use Internet and social media in a professional way. Also attention to the use of infographics will be given. Khaled Suleiman and Internet-expert Sardasht Aziz are the trainers during this workshop. Last week the participants got an introduction to the basics of journalism and what news is. Media in Iraqi Kurdistan need more female journalists. They are needed to make the media more interesting for the big target group of women that are hardly reached now. Even though women make up the majority of all Iraqi's, they are hardly to be seen in the media. The training will last for six weeks with a focus on different subjects. The training started with a week on news and basic journalism, and will be followed by a week on print-journalism, two weeks for TV-journalism, a week t...

 On 22 April 2012, Kurds celebrated the 114th anniversary of the first Kurdish newspaper, Kurdistan , which was issued in Egypt by Miqdad Medhet al-Bedirxan. Journalists and writers gathered for the ceremony at the Women Media and Education Centre of Rewan magazine in Sulaymaniya. Among the invitees were Stran Abdullah (Kurdistan Nwe), Dr. Sherko Man Gorie, Yahya Omar and IMCK-director Judit Neurink. Judit Neurink was invited to join a discussion in the centre about the future of the newspaper (in Kurdistan). The discussion was introduced with remarks such as that Internet is a replacement for the newspaper and that Internet misses the same power as the newspaper. The rise of digital media is of great concern to some for the future of the newspaper. Decreasing revenues through advertising and paper-selling are a big threat to the continuing existence of newspapers. So how can the future of this medium be saved? Judit Neurink noted two things that are relevant to the...

After years of isolation, the Kurdish society is opening up to the outside world. Investers and traders come in, leaders of foreign countries come to visit. This should have its results for the media. For Kurdish reporters to get more experience on reporting on foreign issues, IMCK organised a three day training course in Sulaymaniya, starting on December 19, 2010. Trainers are Wendelmoet Boersema, former chief of the foreign desk of Trouw newspaper and former correspondent in Moscow, and Judit Neurink, senior trainer for IMCK and correspondent in Iraq for Trouw newspaper. Twelve reporters from different (party, semi-independent and independent) media in Sulaymaniya participated in the workshop, which took place at the conference room of Aso newspaper, as the IMCK trainingroom was occupied. The workshop covered issues like how to choose news items on foreign subjects for your media outlet, how to give the news a Kurdish link, how to find sources for stories outside Kurdistan and how to...

International trainer Gie Meeuwis is training Newroz TV, the Kurdish TV station that is reporting on the activities of the Kurdish government. The 3 day training (18-20 February 2009) in Irbil is meant to improve the news reporting and to advise the director on what is needed to improve the overall quality of the channel.

The Kurdish press agency AK in Irbil was the venue of a 5-day training IMCK started on June 15. Trainer Maaike Veen was back at AK to train groups of editors and correspondents. She trained AK already in the preparatory phase in 2008, before the start last summer. AK has since grown to be one of the more successful press agencies in Kurdistan. It now publishes in Kurdish, Arabic, English, Farsi and Turkish ( http://www.aknews.com/ ). Its news is published in media all over the world.

With parliamentary elections planned for July 25, IMCK is organising 6 workshops of a day on how to report before and during elections. Dutch trainer Nynke La Porte started on Saturday June 6 at Hawler newspaper in Irbil. La Porte is a Dutch journalist, who reported on at least 3 elections in the Netherlands. She is making a comparison with Dutch elections which were dominated by a new party, which was even predicted to become the biggest party in the Netherlands. In Kurdistan new parties have emerged, most importantly the Change List, which is predicted to take many votes. Hawler is a daily newpaper which prints 25.000 copies a day and is distributed for free in the whole of the Kurdish region. Other media to be trained will be Barzan, Zagros TV, Kurdsat TV, Awene and Rojnama.

IMCK organised on April 28 a seminar on reporting before, during and after elections for Kurdish journalists. The seminar, which took the whole morning, was part of the civil journalism training for parliamentary reporters held in Irbil from April 21-28. Apart from the participants to the workshop, other journalists were invited to the main hall at Aras Publishing House in Irbil. Three Dutch journalists (Hans Otte, Milja de Zwart and Roel Geeraedts) talked to their Kurdish colleagues about their experiences with reporting on elections, and gave them some ideas on how to get politicians to use the media to get their plans and ideas to the voters. Media could get politicians and voters into contact by traveling around the country in a special bus, or even a Hummer. Or by organising debates between politicians. The main message of the morning was to get politicians to talk about content, about their plans, in stead of being used for fights between them and for slanging matches. The works...