About the NAWA Media Newsroom

The NAWA Media Newsroom was launched in 2017 with a team of journalism students from the Lebanese University. In 2020, new students joined us from Syria, Yemen and Egypt, followed by a new cohort of students from Palestine and Sudan in 2021.

In 2020, country-focused newsrooms reported on: the effect of COVID-19 on the economy in Yemen; medical shortages in Egypt; threats faced by journalists in Syria; and the mental health consequences of the Beirut blast. They also worked on podcasts, infographics, and investigations. This wouldn’t have been possible without the six-month training program we organized with openDemocracy, where students learned about sourcing, digital security, investigative journalism, podcasting, open-source investigations, and others. The recordings of these sessions are available on YouTube. 

In 2021, we expanded the Newsroom further, to include students from Palestine and to focus on fact-checking health misinformation, this time with additional support from Skeyes Media: Centre for Media and Cultural Freedom, leading to the release of the Media Credibility Index in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

In 2022, the Newsroom participants joined a training programme run by the Check Global NAWA team. The training programme aimed to provide journalism students with essential knowledge to improve their journalistic skills, as well as fact-checking and media monitoring techniques. Students from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Egypt and Sudan took part in this year’s programme. 

Students use the Newsroom as a training and learning space to enhance their writing and journalistic skills. As all our students are based in NAWA, they predominantly blog and produce content in Arabic, so please check the Arabic posts for their most up-to date content. Please feel free to share with us any constructive comments and ideas you have.