The Center set up a full-fledged Training Desk in 1994, in response to demands from reporters and editors for seminars responsive to the needs of beat reporters, the media’s frontline workers. PCIJ seminars go beyond the basic theoretical inputs provided by journalism textbooks. Instead, they focus on actual problems confronted by reporters, including evaluating sources; verifying data and gathering evidence; ethical conduct between source and reporter; and access to information.

The Center tries as much as possible to combine inputs on journalistic craft, particularly investigative reporting techniques, with substantive inputs on particular areas of concern, such as the environment or local governance. It also uses these seminars to foster frank exchanges between journalists and officials, particularly on such issues as freedom of information, access to documents, and the rights of journalists.

Even before the Training Desk was formally organized, PCIJ was already into knowledge-sharing activities. Since 1990, it has conducted almost a hundred training seminars, workshops and forums for print, broadcast, and online journalists (lately including citizen bloggers), journalism teachers and students on journalism and investigative reporting skills. More than a thousand journalists in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, and other Southeast Asian countries have attended these training seminars.

A total of 75 seminar-workshops for print, broadcast and online journalists, journalism teachers and students, in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan and other Southeast Asian countries have attended the PCIJ’s training seminars.