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Like much of the economy, Jordan’s media sector has been affected by the global recession, with revenue down and a round of belt tightening the order of the day, though even in difficult times the industry has been looking to improve both its quality and its bottom line.

The global economic crisis is having an impact on the Jordanian media sector, with advertising revenue for the first nine months of the year down by 20% compared to the same period in 2008, according to industry figures. This is a sharp turnaround from the past few years, which have seen double-digit earnings growth. If the current trend carries through to the end of the year, advertising revenue could fall to around $240m, down from the $303m of 2008.

In mid-November, the Jordan chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA Jordan) announced it was launching a media awareness campaign to promote optimism in the economy and, just as importantly for the sector, the importance of maintaining advertising during the downturn.

According to Karim Abu Khadra, the president of IAA Jordan, the campaign will put the spotlight on firms that achieved growth thanks to continued advertising. Rather than reduce spending on advertising, as was so often the case in times of recession, studies showed that increasing promotional outlays could help a company weather hard economic times, he said in an interview with local press on November 15.

“We were able to take advantage of this global crisis to stop, think and carefully plan for future and the changes that we, as an industry, will face in the coming years,” said Abu Khadra. “We were also able to co-operate, exchange ideas and expertise to come up with this campaign – which we believe – is crucial for creating the behavioural change needed to face economic challenges.”

While the crisis has focused attention on the need to strengthen advertising income and revenue streams in the media sector, another initiative has been launched to improve the quality of Jordan’s media offerings, through the inauguration of a new training complex for media professionals in the Arab world.

The vehicle for this endeavour is the Jordan Media Institute (JMI), the brainchild of Princess Rym Ali, wife of Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, but better known to many as Rym Brahimi, a producer and reporter with CNN following stints with the BBC and the Bloomberg news agency.

Located in central Amman, the JMI will focus on training and refining the next generation of media professionals in the Middle East, with plans to have two main streams, a masters programme and journalism training programmes, both of which will predominantly be taught in Arabic.

The year-long master’s programme, which will have its first intake in early 2010, will offer cross-media platform training in print, online, television and radio journalism, equipping students with the skills to meet the changing needs of the industry. Along with mandatory courses in reporting, writing, media law and press ethics, there will also be specialised training in investigative journalism, together with business, scientific and social affairs journalism.

The lower-level training courses, being developed in cooperation with local media and other academic institutions, are intended to offer those already working in the industry supplementary courses, while newcomers will receive introductory lessons.

Founded in 2007, the idea for the JMI grew from industry demands for quality media personnel, according to Princess Rym, with the shortage of qualified staff having been driven, in part at least, by the rapid growth of media across the Middle East.

“A lot of people complained of not being able to hire people at the highest levels – good journalists, critical thinkers who were able to write properly in Arabic,” she said in an interview with regional media in mid-October.

Jordan is by no means alone in putting in place media training facilities, with a number of universities offering courses in journalism and production across the Middle East. However, with the planned initial intake for its masters course being just 20 students, the emphasis of the institute’s programmes will be quality, Princess Rym added.

Despite the difficult economic times, the JMI has been successful in gaining support from a range of sources, both local and international. In May last year, the European Commission and the Ministry of Planning and International Co-operation inked an agreement under which the commission would provide $1.4m to support the JMI.

In mid-October, Zain Jordan – part of the Kuwait-based mobile telephone corporation Zain – announced it would fund a postgraduate scholarship for a Jordanian journalist studying at the JMI, while the institute has also been given support by advertising and international media consultancy agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

Both the positive press and a focus on knowledge within the industry will likely provide a much-needed boost to the Jordanian media sector, considering the challenges the country, and indeed the region, has faced over the past year. On a more practical note, by establishing Jordan as a centre for journalistic educational excellence, the JMI could well attract more investments in the local media sector, serving to improve quantity and quality.