A World War II cemetery in India became a subject to test journalists’ writing skills during a five-day workshop in the northern state of Nagaland, one of the country’s most remote areas.
The course on balanced reporting, conducted in January by the Thomson Foundation, was designed for local journalists in Kohima, Nagaland’s capital.
Thomson said that 12 of the workshop participants were from Nagaland, seven from the state of Tripura, five from the state of Mizoram, and one each from both Assam and Sikkim. None of the participants had received any formal training.
The Kohima war cemetery contains the graves of more than 1,000 British servicemen and one woman, a nurse in the Territorial Army. It also includes a memorial to about 400 Indian Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims who died fighting alongside the British. All died fighting the Japanese army in April 1944.
Thomson consultant Norman Carroll led the course. To test the participants’ feature writing skills, Carroll sent them to the cemetery and told them not to return until they had enough material for a 400-word story. According to Thomson, all the participants passed Carroll’s test.
The course in Kohima was the third in a series of editorial workshops led by Carroll in India. The others were in Assam in 2001 and Meghalaya in 2002. The British High Commission in Calcutta organized al three in cooperation with Thomson. For more information, visit http://www.thomsonfoundation.co.uk/.
