Climate reporting from Copenhagen to China, June 2009. Photo: Lis Jespersen/IMS

IMS is planning to increase activities in China in 2010 and 2011 following successful activities in 2009 such as a Roundtable on Investigative Journalism in Beijing and a two-day seminar on investigative journalism, involving both Chinese and British senior investigative journalists

In the first days of 2010 Martin Breum and Lis Jespersen from IMS met the Chinese partners in Beijing to review last year's activities and discuss possibilities for a continued joint program.

- The meetings went very well and our colleagues from Caixing Media are ready to work with us on another course on Climate Change Reporting for a group of China’s most prominent environmental journalists, Says Martin Breum after his return to Denmark.

If all goes as hoped, the participants on this course, now planned for June 2010, will return from the course in Beijing and Copenhagen even better positioned to cover climate change issues in the future and serve as inspiration to many of their colleagues in China.

- We are exited to be implementing this course with the strong team from Caixing Media, says Martin Breum.

Most of the participants used to work for Caijing Magazine in Beijing, and in collaboration with IMS they carried out a climate change course in Beijing and Denmark in June 2009. Today Caijing Magazine is busy setting up a brand new multimedia enterprise, still under the famous leadership of chief editor Hu Shuli. The first issue of new magazine, New Century News, hit the streets in China in early January 2010.

Developing new partnerships in China

In 2010 IMS also plans to enter into cooperation with an academic partner in Beijing in order to establish an academic exchange program involving visits from China to Denmark that aims to strengthen the study of and teaching in investigative journalism in China. Through this partnership, IMS hopes to put together a team of Chinese investigative reporters for the 6^th Global Conference on Investigative Journalism in Geneva in April 2010.

Come May 2010 IMS hopes to be able to start a series of seminars in the city of Kunming in the Yunnan province focussing on in-depth reporting on topics of current relevance in Western China. Here IMS is collaborating with strong partners in China in planning a series of seminars for  outstanding journalists in several Western provinces. The seminars will be aimed particularly at journalists with experience in dealing with the interface between journalism in print, radio and TV and the increasingly influential blogosphere in China.

IMS has found that a strong, professional journalism is rapidly developing a mutually challenging relationship with private content-producers on the Internet in China, and IMS is eager to explore the potential of new avenues for creative development of journalism.

For more in Danish about the IMS mission to China, go to Martin Breum's blog on the homepage of Journalisten.