Ironman Soldiers share experiences with Afghan journalists

LAGHMAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan – If you asked U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Greg Zuercher back in 1984 what he’d be doing today, he probably would have never guessed he’d be in Afghanistan giving tips on news-writing to Afghan journalists.

But that’s exactly what the military journalist with the Kansas Agribusiness Development Team was doing Feb. 23 at the first Laghman Province Afghan Journalism Seminar in Mehtar Lam. Zuercher, who graduated with a degree in journalism from Kansas State University in 1984, taught a news-writing segment of the two-day professional development seminar.

“I tried to show the journalists how they can use a short sentence to draw the reader into the story and then present the facts,” said Zuercher of Wichita, Kansas. “I told them that their initial sentence needs to be a grabber; it needs to grab the reader and encourage them to read on.”

Zuercher was one of the military journalists who shared their knowledge and tips with their Afghan counterparts during the seminar. About 40 local Afghan journalists, including eight women, attended the seminar. The training was organized by U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Brittany Martin, a public affairs officer with the Laghman Provincial Reconstruction Team, and a native of Katy, Texas. Both Zuercher and Martin are serving with 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment Task, Force Ironman, part of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Task Force Red Bulls.

“The Director of Information, Culture and Youth, Fazzinullah Patan, has been proactive in increasing the capability of Laghman’s media,” Martin said. “We are excited that he allowed us to work with his department to conduct this training, and we look forward to holding follow-on sessions to continue to improve the skills of the local journalists.”

On the first day of the seminar, Feb. 22, Mahtab Farid, a native of Santa Monica, Calif., and U.S. State Department public diplomacy officer who has worked as a journalist in the U.S., discussed the elements of writing a solid lead, or introduction, to a news story. She also stressed that the most important factor in any story is to present the truth with confirmed facts from reliable sources.

Zuercher built on this training the second day, and also featured tips on photography from other Ironman journalists. The journalists then separated into working groups in which the Afghan journalists sat down with American military journalists from Task Force Ironman to discuss the leads they had written. During the working group, the Afghans and Americans worked together to formulate questions for the seminar’s grand finale, an actual press conference by Laghman Province Director of Forestry, Haji Auhe. When the TF Ironman journalists were originally drafting out the seminar, they planned on hosting mock scenarios, but Zuercher thought of a better idea.

“I suggested instead of picking a fictitious story to hold a press conference on, that we chose something that’s a real ongoing event,” Zuercher said. “I thought of the reforestation program that the Kansas Agribusiness Development Team is hosting, and it turned out to be a good story, and something that we could bring a subject matter expert in to speak on.”

That subject matter expert was Auhe, who spoke at length about the reforestation project, which has brought 35,000 new trees to the province already and will bring about 125,000 by its completion. The journalists asked questions on all aspects of the project, from who will care for the new trees, to how long the trees will produce fruit.

Atiquallah Qurashi, a writer for a Laghman Province weekly magazine, was one of the journalists who attended the seminar.

“We learned to report the facts of our story in a concise manner,” Qurashi said. “The instructors showed us how to shorten our reports and still get all the facts in. The best part of the seminar for me was that the Americans did not talk to us like students; they talked to us like friends. I will use the things I learned in this seminar every single day on the job.”