Participants at a Thomson Reuters Foundation Writing and Reporting News course in London in November were given a rare opportunity on a feature-writing field trip to visit the site of the 2012 Olympic Games. They were also given a briefing by Lord Coe, the head of the London Olympics organising committee. Course leader Colin McIntyre, who reported the 1980 Olympics in Moscow where Sebastian Coe, as he then was, won the first of his two Olympic gold medals in the 1500 metres, was looking on. The participants, from Estonia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Lebanon, Egypt, Myanmar, Colombia, Paraguay, Botswana and Croatia, asked questions about the cost of the Olympics, its legacy, and how much support there was for the Games among local people.
The trip, organised by Reuters Sports Desk, was something of a coup for the Foundation, as British media were reportedly queuing up to talk to Lord Coe. The trip was preceded by a module on how to write features, and followed by a session where participants shared their ideas on the various ways of approaching the subject. The course also looked at other aspects of reporting, including breaking news, wrapping together stories from different datelines on the same topic, two-way radio interviews, as well as ethics, responsibility and legal dangers.
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