Facilitators guiding the participants create stories. (Morung Photo)
As part of the Cultures of Peace, a workshop on journalism/writing was conducted by Tongam Rina and Parismita Singh on November 9 at Tetso College.
Tongam Rina, Associate Editor, The Arunachal Times writes extensively on environmental and children’s issues. She also teaches print media in the department of Mass Communication, Rajiv Gandhi University.
Parismita Singh is a writer and graphic novelist. Her publications include the The Hotel at the End of the World, a graphic novel and Peace has Come (2018) was a collection of short stories. She has been working on a primary school education project in Assam with the NGO Pratham since 2009.
About forty persons including journalists, activists, teachers and students participated in the workshop.
Rina took the participants on a journey from conceptualising a story to getting it published. She highlighted on the journalistic ethics and principles of writing a good story. One of the cardinal principles in journalism is to protect your source and this principle cannot be compromised under any circumstance, she said. The other important principle is to make fact the basis of your story and to stay away from biases. She also pointed out on the need to verify the facts as facts may be distorted at times. This, she said, is the duty of every journalist.
Often, the most difficult step, in writing a story is to start, she pointed out. No draft is perfect and one has to constantly work and re-work on the draft.
Singh spoke about how graphics and cartoons have been successfully used as a medium of storytelling in history. Taking the example of Art Spiegelman and how he used animal figures to tell the harrowing story of his parents, both Auschwitz survivors through his famous graphic novel ‘Maus’.
She also highlighted how mediums of storytelling can extremely be political and how politics incapacitates storytelling at times.
Spielgelman, at one time used graphics to tell story about anti-semitism and was celebrated for effectively using graphics while he was shunned and distanced by the same media houses and channels when he created the ‘In the Shadow of no Towers’, his reactions after the 9/11 attacks for being not patriotic enough.
After the presentations made by the two facilitators, participants took part in conceptualising a story of their choice guided by the facilitators who were then guided to create graphic/cartoon characters based on their story.
The participants got their works adjudged and commented by Urvashi Butalia, noted Indian feminist, founder of Zubaan and co-founder of Kali for Women.
