Casual visitors would have been forgiven for thinking they’d walked into a plenary session at the United Nations rather than the Thomson Reuters Foundation training for Writing and Reporting News held in London the last week of May. The ethics and practice of journalism were heatedly debated and carried out by journalists from eleven countries, who had gathered to share their experiences, improve their newsgathering and writing skills, and learn how one of the world’s largest news organisations works – all with the aim of improving the world, one story at a time.

Journalists from Nigeria, Georgia, Cambodia, Armenia, Zambia, Peru, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Vietnam, Kenya and Romania joined trainer Lisa Essex, formerly a Reuters journalist, and copy critic Angus MacSwan, world desk editor.

A plea from participants to meet “real Reuters people” led to a stream of visitors to the group, including Quentin Webb from Mergers and Acquisitions, Lloyd Watson from Television, Simon Newman from Pictures, Peter Apps from Political risk, and Astrid Zweynert from AlertNet.

Monique Villa, chief executive officer of the Foundation, also came to discuss with participants the role of the new Emergency Information Service, which supplies fast and practical information from all available sources, such as help in finding shelters, drinking water and missing relatives in the wake of disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti.

The group was challenged with such tasks as designing a code of journalistic conduct, writing multi-stranded stories under pressure, interviewing surly officials (role-played by the trainers) and ensuring the core Reuters values of accuracy, speed, and freedom from bias were upheld 100 percent of the time.

The dangers of the journalistic profession were emphasised in a session on safety, led by Angus MacSwan, who drew on his time covering conflicts around the world to offer practical tips to the group to ensure their safety.

Since one of the participants was reckless enough to suggest the group should experience something truly “English”, at one point they found themselves doing an old English folk dance (Morris Dancing) on the plaza outside Canary Wharf underground station, watched by incredulous bankers, and interested school-children.

The group was also fortunate to bump into Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger on a trip around the bustling Reuters newsroom. He congratulated everyone on their commitment to the training course, and welcomed them to the heart of  Reuters.

Saying goodbye is always hard, particularly on a course which certainly lived up to the “work-hard-play-hard” cliché. Amid exchanging phone numbers and email addresses, planning holidays to visit each other, the group vowed to push ahead with the new online-training modules supplied by the Foundation, to keep alive the spirit of strong journalism and strong friendship which blossomed during the week in London.