Participants in BBC World Service Trust Training in Yemen

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In Yemen, where the World Service Trust ran extensive training for journalists to improve the standard of reporting during the local and presidential elections in September 2006, changes in output were detected after training.

Research findings

The paper presents detailed findings, including evidence of how news bulletins produced by Yemeni broadcasters improved. Thanks to the training program, news bulletins use shorter and more concise headlines; more live, on-location interviews and footage; and more balanced reporting.

The findings from the research reveal the complexity of delivering journalism training and the challenges involved in capturing evidence of impact.

The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of content analysis in detecting subtle changes in content, presentation of output and production elements that might not be captured by other research techniques.

The paper also identifies the importance of using multiple research ‘tools’ to provide a more complete understanding of the changes that have taken place at four levels (system, organisation, practitioner, audience) and the role of the training courses in this process.