Volume II
Peace Journalism
A report can calm a region or set it alight. Usually the author never finds out which.
Peace Journalism is not advocacy, and it is not the withholding of uncomfortable facts. It is the craft of reporting a conflict accurately while knowing what your own words do inside it.
One hundred and fifty pages. Six chapters. Fifty hours of work. Written by the founder of the World Mediation Organization.
EUR 390 · self study · begin today
The Problem, Stated Plainly
Conflicts are not misunderstood for lack of goodwill.
They are misunderstood because somebody counted two parties where there were eight. Because somebody began the story on the wrong day. And because the one person who had already solved the problem twice was never asked.
Those are failures of method. Methods can be learned, and that is the only reason a training like this can exist.
What You Actually Get
Six chapters of roughly twenty pages each, delivered as a book rather than as a slide deck.
One. What This Is, and What It Is Not. The discipline, its strongest critics in full, and what survives them.
Two. The Setting. Entering a place without becoming part of its conflict: preparation, access, the colleague whose network you spend, and the risk that is never symmetrical.
Three. Field Research and Verification. Weighing accounts, interviewing people who have lost something, consent where refusal is not really available, and the documents nobody looks for.
Four. Framing. What your grammar does to a situation, and how a report is actually built from the lead to the close.
Five. Reporting Under Pressure. The newsroom, the editor, the lawyer, the deadline, and the question of when a report is capable of mattering at all.
Six. After Publication. What you owe the people who spoke to you, and the return visit that almost nobody makes.
The Fifty Hours
We publish what the work consists of, because a number on its own means nothing.
| Component | Hours |
|---|---|
| Reading the six chapters, 150 pages of dense text | 7 |
| Twelve required readings, named in the chapters, all freely available | 16 |
| Six exercises, done on your own published work | 4 |
| Sixty questions with immediate answers, ten per chapter | 3 |
| Six written analyses, one per chapter | 18 |
| A final assignment: one conflict report at three lengths | 6 |
| Total | 54 |
We publish fifty rather than fifty four, so that the figure holds even if you work faster than we expect. The reading is the part you could get from any library. The eighteen hours of writing are the part you cannot.
Who This Is For
For the reporter who covers conflict occasionally and improvises each time. For the correspondent who has done it for years and has begun to notice patterns in his own work he cannot quite name. For communication staff in agencies and organizations who publish about places where people are being hurt, and who are, whether they use the title or not, doing journalism.
And above all for the local journalist who lives in the region he reports on, who cannot leave on Friday, and who carries the consequences of every sentence into his own street. If this training is any good, its clearest benefit will be to him.
No prior qualification is required, and no membership.
What Makes It Different
It argues with itself. The case against peace journalism appears in the first chapter, at full strength, in the words of the correspondents who make it. A training that shows you only the friendly side of its own subject is an advertisement.
It teaches the writing, not only the thinking. A craft thread runs through all six chapters, from the plain sentence that carries no verdict to the piece you write two years later, when nobody is commissioning anything.
It runs on one case. A single valley, five people who see the same events entirely differently, followed from the first arrival to the morning the article appears and is read by all of them.
It is honest about what reporting can do. Modestly, in some readers, mostly when conditions are already moving. Anyone claiming more is selling something.
What It Is Not
It is not the WMO certification. It carries no title and produces no entry in the Mediators Directory. Nothing you submit is read by a person, because nothing is submitted.
What you receive is a Statement of Completion, issued the day you finish, recording the training and its hours. Complete all six Field Trainings and the house issues a Certificate of Completion for the series, recording some eight hundred and eighty pages and not fewer than three hundred hours.
When you want the formation with examination, written feedback, and a certificate that anybody can verify against a public register, that door is the Expert Training, and this fee comes off it within the year.
Price and Terms
EUR 390. The same fee in every country in the world. Paid once, no subscription.
Access for twelve months. Study in any rhythm and any time zone. Begin the day you pay.
The fee is credited once against the Expert Training if you book within twelve months.
Questions People Actually Ask
Is this journalism for peace? No. It is conflict reporting done thoroughly: more parties, a longer timeline, names distributed evenly, and the attempts to end it counted among the facts. We spend a whole chapter defending that distinction.
Do I have to be a journalist? No. Anyone who publishes about places where people are being hurt will find the method applies.
Is there an examination? No, and no tutor and no deadlines. Each chapter carries ten questions with the answers printed beneath them, asking you to apply the chapter rather than recall it. Nothing is scored and nothing is recorded. A test that graded you would measure recognition, and this training concerns judgement.
Fifty hours, really? Seven hours of reading and forty seven of work, set out above. Read the chapters and do none of it and you will finish in an evening. The statement cannot tell the difference, and we say so.
Does it certify me? No, and we would not want a house that issued titles for self study. The certification route is the Expert Training.
Can I do it on a telephone? You can read it anywhere. The writing needs a keyboard.
Is there a discount? No. One price everywhere, and no sales.
You cannot report a conflict from outside it. You can report it without making it worse.
EUR 390 · 150 pages · Statement of Completion the same day