Students search for know-how

Chronicle hosts journos

THE search for skills to report on Mongolia’s mining resource boom led a group of students all the way to The Chronicle.

The group of 20 Mongolian journalists visited The Chronicle’s office yesterday as part of a nine-day tour to find out more about how the Australian mining industry worked, how the country’s news organisations reported on it and how they could adapt their knowledge to work back at home.

Ariunzaya Byambaa was on a break from her normal work at a Mongolian daily newspaper and said there were many parallels between Australia and her country.

She said the mining boom had brought many benefits to Mongolia, but there were fierce clashes between nomadic herdsmen and mining companies because grazing land wasn’t owned by anybody, yet mining companies were able to come in and put up fences to exclude them from traditional grazing land.

There were also environmental concerns because the country’s soils were prone to erosion and

other problems.

“The University of Queensland has won this contract that enables our participants to visit Australia and learn from the Australian experience, which is also a mining-based economy,” she said.

“This is the fourth phase of the training, which has been carried out for a year.

“We will write articles on mining issues and in the final phase we will go home to produce a big product.”

She said some of the journalists had already written articles about Australia, including our Anzac commemorations, to send home to Mongolia.

The project has a wide range of stakeholders

including three University of Queensland departments, a German federal-owned international development company and its Mongolian-based subsidiary, Integrated Mineral Resource Initiative.

The $300,000 project was aimed at teaching reporters who normally dealt with business and economic

reporting to see past headlines and gain a more in-depth knowledge of the issues they were reporting.

Lecturer Bruce Woolley from UQ’s School of Communication and Arts travelled to Mongolia to deliver a five-day course on principles in journalism and key themes in mining before the group visited Australia.

❝We

will write articles on mining issues and in the final phase we will go home to produce a big product. — Ariunzaya Byambaa

PHOTO: MEGAN MASTERS ON TOUR: Enjoying a tour of The Chronicle office to learn more about how news organisations in Australia function are Mongolian visitors (from left) Tungalagtuya Mishig, Ariunzaya Byambaa, Bolortuya Chuluunbaatar, Iderjargal Dashdondog and Baasansuren...