TEHRAN The General Manager of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), Fereydoun Verdinezhad, in the graduation ceremony of School of Journalism students elaborated on the activities of IRNA. He said that IRNA has so far hosted various workshops in the framework of the news coalitions, adding that in 1985 it held the Workshop on Feature Writing and Photo-Journalism which was co-sponsored by UNESCO and OANA. In 1992, and under the coalition of news agencies from Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), IRNA launched the Workshop Development Journalism for the senior editors of NAM news agencies.

He further said that IRNA attaches great importance to the education and training of its staff. In 1996, IRNA managed to receive licence to establish IRNA's full-fledged professional training center School of Journalism in a bid to train people who are interested to cover the latest theoretical and applied aspect of journalism, he explained. He went on to say that students in the faculty major in the following six sub-disciplines of reporting the political, social, economic, sports, arts-cultural and strategic science news.

The students cover a total of 137 credits comprising of theoretical, practical and optional courses and graduate with a BA degree in journalism.