THERE WILL BE INK - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

sales elsewhere. The cost of this course is N180,000 ($1385), which includes all course materials, teaand lunch and is most often funded by media outlets, given that this price is prohibitive for averagejournalist wages. It is important to note that there are no specific sessions dedicated to extractiveindustries, nor do they offer New Media.Professor Patrick Utomi, one of the Lagos Business School’s founding members, also conductstrainings. He said he has typically offered two types of journalism trainings, one for journalists in thefield and another for business editors and other “gatekeepers.” 74 The purpose of this “gatekeeper”training is to help editors learn what to ask for and how to identify poor business reporting. He hasalso organized quarterly “media seminars” on economic and business reporting. Each seminarfocuses on a single theme, such as corporate finance.Trainings by Local Organizations and NonprofitsThe International Press Centre (IPC), a Nigerian-run organization, conducts regular trainings onbudget monitoring and corruption. These tend to be two to three day workshops of approximately25 people. According to Lanre Arogundade of IPC, “Over time, from our own observations andstudies we tend to think that budget and corruption reporting is a bit devoid of what we call thesocial element, we don’t get the social context for these issues. You read newspapers and discover itis more about the figures. The whole idea is to sensitize the public, to let the public know how muchhas been stolen from the public sphere. The average reader begins to think these looters ingovernment are engaged in a game of numbers. We begin to think that budget and corruptionreporting is not directly related to development. For corruption, we have to go beyond these figuresto analyze how they actually affect people.” 75Development Communications Network (Devcoms), a Nigerian-run organization directed by aformer reporter for The Guardian, conducts three to five day trainings for journalists on developmentissues. Most of their trainings focus on health and science reporting, though some aspects of theirhealth reporting, such as poverty-related health risk, have economic elements. Devcoms alsoorganizes a monthly media forum where they invite a representative from an organization to cover aspecific issue.Devcoms is currently in the preliminary steps in organizing a financial reporting training inconjunction with First City Management Bank. Following the training, First City will give journalistsgrants to do investigative reports. They are also creating a budget monitoring training.Trainings by Nigerian Financial Institutions and CompaniesMost of the journalists in our sample had received training from Nigerian financial institutions andcompanies. The trainings in Nigeria, usually held annually, are primarily held by the stock exchange,the local Securities and Exchange Commission, the Central Bank and the Nigerian DepositInsurance Corporation. They tend to focus more on content rather than skills. SEC trainings, forexample, cover regulatory and supervisory issues in the capital market environment.According to a long-time broadcast business journalist, these particular trainings have helped him tounderstand the issues involved in an emerging market economy and how regulators handle theissues. However, he said that these trainings are based on what the institutions wish the financialmedia to know about their operations, a fact that can compromise the reporting of journalists. This74 Patrick Utomi. 2009. Interview by Adriana Diaz. Lagos, Nigeria, January 15.75 Lanre Arogundade. 2009. Interview by Ben Colmery. Lagos, Nigeria, January 16.– 26 –