By Sami Aboudi
The media scene in the Middle East is set to change after Abu Dhabi launched a training academy aimed at transferring media expertise to the region.
Abu Dhabi’s twofour54 has teamed up with some of the world’s top media companies, including Thomson Reuters Foundation, to offer training to more than 3,000 media professionals from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east – a region of some 300 million people -- during the next two years.
“Through this dedicated training academy, we are taking major steps forward in developing the Arabic content creation talent pool across the Middle East and North Africa,” twofour54 CEO Tony Orsten told more than 150 media specialists at the official launch of the tadreeb academy last month.
“The academy offers outcome driven courses devised by the world’s leading media organizations and carried out by highly experienced instructors, in a world-class training environment,” he added.
Despite being one of the main sources of news for international journalists, media training in the Middle East has lagged behind other parts of the world.
Apart from modest facilities catering to local journalists in countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, regional training has been limited to a facility set up some four years ago by Al-Jazeera satellite channel in Qatar.
Twofour54 tadreeb sees its academy as a bridge between local talent and the international media. Through its partnership with Thomson Reuters Foundation, the BBC and Thomson Foundation, tadreeb offers more than 200 bilingual courses across a range of media disciplines, including news writing and editing, television reporting, broadcast technology, digital media, radio and media business.
It also offers a range of specialist media workshops for government officials, corporate executives and news organisations constructed around their specific needs.
“We help journalists look at things differently, develop their critical sense to come to the substance of the news, to develop their skills and go the extra mile in their pursuit of stories,” Thomson Reuters Foundation’s CEO, Monique Villa, told the launch ceremony, “This is something the Thomson Reuters Foundation has been sharing in all corners of the globe for many years now and I am delighted that I am now standing here today in Abu Dhabi on the next part of the journey,” she added.
Officials say that up to 200 media specialists have been through the academy, which launched its operations from a lone training room at the second media “free zone” being set up by the UAE – part of the Arab country’s drive to establish itself as a regional hub for “content creation” for media companies from around the world.
The academy has since moved to a bigger facility featuring five training halls equipped to accommodate more than 100 students at one time.
Training is delivered in Arabic by trained experts from the region or in Arabic and English when international trainers are involved. But the academy seeks to ensure that training be region-focused, insisting that course materials and exercises are designed around local events to make them more relevant to local concerns.
Many students have praised the facility as a true centre of learning. “For me, it was a great week full of knowledge and information,” wrote Ahmed Al-Kindi, an Omani journalist at the end of a five-day television news reporting course offered by Thomson Reuters Foundation in March.
Click here to read the speech of Thomson Reuters Foundation's CEO, Monique Villa.