Journalism Training Focused on Development Reporting
17-21 June 2017 (3-7Asar 2074)
Summary
” The development focused training will be the milestone for reporters to bring local development issues. Trainees will be able to reach right sources and bring analytical news than before”, inaugurating the development reporting focused training, Chief District Officer of Baglung Rishi Ram Tiwari said. National Media Development Center (NMDC) with the financial support from Department of Information, Ministry of Information and Communications and in coordination with FNJ Baglung branch has successfully organized a five-day Journalism Training Focused on Development Reporting. It was NMDC’s 102nd journalism training that was organized from 17-21 June 2017 (3-7Asar 2074)in Baglung. NMDC has organized its different trainings in 71 out of 75 districts of Nepal. Twenty senior and working journalists actively participated in the training. Including Baglung it has provided training to 2418 participants including 1076 women.
Journalism training focused on development reporting gave high priority to new participants. There were 19 participants including 4 women. All the participants are the working journalists involved in local and national media. There are 9 FM radio stations, and 3 dailies and 7 weeklies in the district.
The five-day long training was designed to the new as well as working journalists focusing on development reporting. NMDC focuses on development issues aiming that after the training the trainees become aware to bring development issues rather than political. In the context of Nepal, the present need is economic development, which is backbone of democracy and independent media. Giving stress on the development issues, trainers and guests at the inaugural session said that journalists have to set development as its mission reporting.
As most of the participants were working reporters so both trainers had explained them with several cases that were related with problems they had faced during reporting. For the first three days, the course covered the principles of basic journalism, news identification, news writing, experience sharing, field reporting and presentation together with the concept of development reporting. In other days, it focused on writing skill, interview skill, and other dimensions of development reporting.
The issues apart from principles covered in the sessions were new media-Facebook, Flicker, Blog, Twitter, Google search, Google mapmaker, development, tourism, culture and economic reporting and code of conduct for the journalists. Discussion also took place that the journalists had to be updated with district information.
Together with several class exercises, presentation and news writing, one field reporting assignment had provided a great practical knowledge and confidence to the reporters. They had told that the field reporting assignment had inspired and gave them a clear idea to be a reporter. Even in a short period, they had become able to recognize and identify issues and had also become able to categorize issues on different themes such as tourism, development and economy. They also have learned that journalists should keep in mind the code of ethics for journalists.
FNJ President Dil Shiris had chaired the inaugural session. Inaugurating the training session, he welcomed the trainers and participants and asked them to take maximum benefit from the senior trainers, which is rarely available. He said the participants were very lucky to have this training. He encouraged them to learn being active and become good reporter.
At the inaugural session representatives from Baglung Municipality, high court Bar Association, District Coordination Committee and senior journalists were present at the session. All of them had expressed their view that after the completion of local election media should also have to guide the local bodies by giving authentic and development related issues.
Trainer Pramod Pradhan asked the reporters to bring development issues otherwise they will be trapped in political reporting. He also asked them to be a beat reporter.
Bishnu Prasad Sharma, Executive Director of NMDC welcoming on behalf of organizer, Department of Information and FNJ had highlighted the content, objective of the five days training. At that time, he briefly informed the rural district focused training programs organized by NMDC has provided writing skill to the reporters and encouraged them to be professional reporter. He also said that the training would be beneficial to both new and working journalists
Pramod Pradhan, Bishnu P Sharma, Dil Shiris, and Akhilnath Sharma had facilitated the training.
NMDC had distributed both pre and post training questionnaires by involving trainees. The concept they had mentioned in the form had shown that the training was successful to transfer basic skill, provide new ideas practiced in national, trends of national media to the participants. In five days, there were different sessions.
At the end, a brief closing session had also been organized in participation with senior journalists, FNJ members, and local journalists. FNJ President Dil Shiris had chaired the session. Baglung Municipality Mayer Janak Poudel as a chief guest distributed the certificates to the trainees. Both trainers Sharma and Pradhan had also addressed at the session. Among the trainees Sirjana Pant from Baglung, Sarita Khatri from Galkot and Prakash Chhantyal from Burtibang had expressed their training experience. All of them said that the training had provided an idea to support on developed issues through media. We have now realized what mistakes we had repeated in our local media they said. At the session former FNJ President and other senior journalists were present.
Achievements of the training:
- Training provided opportunity to share experience and ideas,
- Training encourage to analyze news before broadcasting/publishing
- Participants are encouraged to bring development issues in the local media,
- They learned that to be a professional reporter, they should always follow the truth,
Confidence level of journalists increased.
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