* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“The story lies in the whispers,” our trainer Keith said one day; and our group’s story also lies in the whispers.
“The story lies in the whispers,” our trainer Keith said one day; and our group’s story also lies in the whispers.
The story starts one day before arriving in London for the first, springtime leg of this two-fortnight course, when emails from 15 other journalists from southeastern Europe flooded my inbox, each one saying they could not wait for us to meet.
Often nervous and shy, we did not know what to expect or what to believe. We had heard from previous alumni that this would be the best training in our journalistic life, but we had our doubts. Oh, but they couldn’t have been more right, we began to whisper to each other.
None of us expected that our four weeks together would fly by or that we would wish by the end to have even more training. Usually no one wants more training, or more learning, but we realised we did.
And we still have a lot to learn about writing, about the art of story-telling and about each other. We found this out thanks to Richard and Keith, our British trainers who taught us how to love journalism even more than we already did.
After doses of British humour and hard work, at least some of us realised we really would like to be journalists for the rest of our lives.
Although we spent four weeks in four cities – London and Brussels in the spring and Frankfurt and Berlin in the autumn - our training took place in a mythical land called Manchukistan. There, we learned how to spot issues such as corruption or tax avoidance and report about them.
Manchukistan may seem like a foreign land, but in the end we found it to be similar to each of our countries, which stretch from Turkey to Slovenia.
It had maybe the same corruption problems as Montenegro, the same agricultural system as Romania or the same child labour problems as Bulgaria. And I must confess that at first I did not know all this, because I knew little about my neighbours.
Journalists from Bosnia Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Turkey, Kosovo, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia took part.
Aleksandra Kuljanin from Sarajevo said the course had put friendly faces for her to all of these nearby countries.
“I know I can always call someone from these countries and discuss it if I have any issues in journalism or life, and I know that these people will never just tell me what to do, they will show me how,” she said.
From afar colleagues might think our course was one big holiday but the truth is we worked just as much as we do at home, and we worked enthusiastically. Yes, we also had fun every single night, and I don’t think people will soon forget all our long conversations in the pub – some of them loud, some of them whispered, important things we just wanted to keep among ourselves.
Nor will we forget some of the meetings we had, such as those with officials of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt or at the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
But, as all good things come to an end, we have to state what we learned, and it is not inconsiderable.
“Show me don’t tell me”, “No story is worth a life” and “Corruption likes dark places” are just the first three quotes that come to mind. But more than this, we learned how to write better, how to read between the lines and how to analyse.
Some of us came with no expectations, some with prejudices, but all of us left this course certain we learned a lot, but still had much more to learn.
And for this I must thank the trainers, the foundations who brought us together … and of course my colleagues of 2014, Aleksandra, Ivaylo, Iztok, Vesna, Bogdan, Huseyin, the two Aleksandars, Lazaros, Darina, Lavdim, Stanela, Daniela, Asli and Ana. I am waiting for you all in Romania!
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