Kholoud Kahlifa at the regional conference on investigative journalism in Amman. Photo: Ann-Nina Finne/IMS

For the many young journalists participating, the first regional conference on investigative reporting in the Arab world, which was organised by ARIJ, was an eye-opener and catalyst to take on the challenge of investigative reporting. Three journalists voice their views

Kholoud Kahlifa is an Egyptian journalist, writing mostly feature articles for her Cairo based magazine. She decided to join the ARIJ regional Conference on Investigative Journalism since investigative reporting is something new to her that she feels might regain the trust in journalism in the Arab world.

Not knowing anyone when entering the conference, she admits feeling a bit intimidated, however, she adds with a smile, during the second day of the conference things have gone from intimidating to fantastic.  She finds the conference content very informative, and is especially impressed with the Syrian contribution.

However, she did feel that some of the sessions were too short time wise. Longer, but perhaps fewer, sessions would have given the participants the possibility to further indulge into the issues discussed. In any case, Kholoud seems to be eager to come back next year;

"I personally grew during the conference" she says, adding that it will be good to go back to the magazine and share all the new ideas and impressions with her colleagues.

Until about a month ago Ahmad Asad Fares had never heard about the organisation ARIJ. The head of the department of journalism at Ahmad's university in Amman, Jordan, changed this. Ahmad realized that attending the upcoming conference might be a first step towards specialisation in investigative journalism.

According to Ahmad journalism students have a fear of approaching certain topics, but this fear can possibly be overcome with the help of a good methodology; "If we have a good plan and clean goals, we can reach our goals".

And for next year's conference, Ahmad hopes to attend the conference as a speaker, presenting his own investigative work.

Naela Kahlif is an award winning Palestinian journalist who travels the world, but seized the opportunity to network at the ARIJ conference.  She especially enjoyed the presentations by the foreign guests' speakers, and she bluntly admits that although she didn't pick up many new skills the networking was excellent. Also, she points at the value of looking at how investigations are carried out outside the Arab world.

According to Naela, the Arab participants still need to improve their reports, since the level of the foreign and Arab reports presented at the conference were on very different levels. However, she adds that one step towards this might be to include workshops at next year's conference. This might give people the chance to more informal discussions on methodology and the working process itself.
Although Nuela is already an experienced reporter, she's still 90% sure that she will join ARIJ; "I want to publish my reports on the web, and I definitely want to learn new skills".