At a China-Africa media forum in Beijing this month, one of those attending, Justice Lee Adoboe, was happy to sit outside the conference room.

Adoboe, a journalist from Ghana, sat on a bench just outside the entrance forgoing the comforts enjoyed by those inside the conference room: the tables on which to write, drinks and sweets, or even simply being able to hear the speeches better.

Adoboe was one of 20 Ghanaian reporters invited by Chinese media partners to attend training sessions in Beijing and Guangzhou.

During his three-week stay in China, the senior correspondent of the Accra bureau of Xinhua News Agency was supposed to be relaxing and enjoying himself rather than chasing deadlines and headlines.

Having worked for a local newspaper as a business reporter, Adoboe joined Xinhua in Ghana in 2010. In his new post, Adoboe has broadened his scope from reporting on business, and he now reports on almost anything, from social events to politics.

"The bureau doesn't have a lot of people - only one bureau chief, two Ghana reporters and a Chinese editor," he says.

Adoboe says that since he began working for Xinhua his approach to his job has changed, as a lot of background information and explanations are needed in the stories he writes, given that those he is writing for are either Chinese readers or readers who could be anywhere in the world.

Adoboe is always on the move, and he calls himself "the legs and hands of the bureau".

"Most of my reports are filed in the field," he says.

In June 2012 - he still remembers it was a Saturday - he received a call from a friend who told him an aircraft had crashed, hitting a minivan. Further details were unknown.

"The crash site was a two-hour drive from where I live, and it was raining. I jumped into a taxi and arrived 25 minutes earlier than any other international media."

Xinhua was the first news organization to break the news of the accident, he says, in which a Boeing 727 cargo plane had crashed into the van near Accra airport, killing 10 people.

As a local reporter who grew up in Ghana, Adoboe has good contacts. A few months after he joined Xinhua, a mine collapsed in another town. He was tied up with other things and could not get there, he says, but because he knew the local police commander, he managed to get constant updates on the accident and again beat other international media.

He says he also has to ensure his reports have no bias. Last year, for example, the Ghanaian government announced that some Chinese gold miners in the country were illegal immigrants and more than 100 Chinese workers were arrested. Some media in China treated the arrests as being "anti-Chinese" and wrote harshly critical articles, while Western media comment was largely critical of the Chinese.

"I followed the immigration officials closely to see how they dealt with the case, and I tried my best to show the real picture to readers. While it is true that some Chinese workers were illegal immigrants, I also learned that some were secretly brought in by Ghanaians."

After more than four years of working for Xinhua, Adoboe has established himself as a senior correspondent in the Accra bureau.

"It gives me a great sense of achievement," he says.

wangchao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/06/2014 page4)