BANGLADESH: Business journalism training takes off in Savar

Experts from the BBC, 'Financial Times,' 'Financial Express' and Associated Press develop training modules to teach basic financial reporting to 15 journalists

The Daily Star
Monday, August 3, 2009

Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) started a weeklong residential training of trainers on business journalism in Savar yesterday, with support from Katalyst.

The training pulled in journalists from selected media houses to create a pool of trainers to run on-the-job and formal trainings in business journalism, according to a press release.

The future trainers will be imparted practical knowledge to train others on stock market reports, accountancy skills for better financial reporting, financial statement analysis, and research for business and SME reports, MRDI said.

The journalists will later act as in-house trainers and contribute to long-term capacity development of the respective media houses, MRDI said.

During the course, a business journalism training template will be developed for individual media houses, which the media, both print and electronic, will use for their own capacity building programmes.

After assessing the training needs of the media houses, two training modules have been developed for the course by a team of experts comprising Moazzem Hossain, editor of The Financial Express, Farid Hossain, bureau chief of The Associated Press (AP), Martin Mulligan, senior sub-editor and writer for The Financial Times, UK, and Robert Powell, financial journalist of BBC.

Apart from the international experts, local resource persons including renowned journalists, academics, economists and researchers are conducting the course.

Fifteen journalists, mostly "gatekeepers," from print and electronic media houses are participating in the training, facilitated by Farid Hossain from AP.

Date Posted: 8/3/2009