Dimapur, May 6 (MExN): With the screening of the video ‘We cannot not communicate’, 60 2nd semester students of Salesian College of Higher Education, Dimapur were introduced to a journalism course at the college held from May 3 to 5. The course was conducted under Fr. Jonas Kerketta, Coordinator of Mass Media in the Salesian Province of Dimapur and Editor of Dimapur Links.
The students were taught on the importance of print journalism and the history of newspaper journalism. The resource person reminded the participants that throughout human history journalism was feared as a powerful weapon and unsuccessfully controlled by the powers that be.
The elements and characteristics of news as well as the categories of news reports were dealt with.
The input session on the successful scripting of the first paragraph of the news report, namely the ‘lead’, was carefully examined by the students with copies of newspapers in their hand. In 30 to 35 words a skilled journalist presents the summary of the whole news report on any event, the animator said.
Through the presentation of the ‘inverted pyramid’ structure and the ‘normal pyramid’ structure of writing the animator also demonstrated the clear difference between news reporting and feature writing, respectively.
The animator insisted on the idea of ‘learning by doing’. “By reading books on swimming one cannot become a swimmer nor can you become journalists unless you begin and continue to write” he remarked before adding, “experience is the best teacher”.
The rest of the day was devoted to producing six sample ‘newspapers’ by the six groups into which the participants were divided.
He also highlighted the fact that political parties who were complacent and did not publicize their good works sufficiently, paid the price of disastrous defeats in elections. On the other hand, their opponents made aggressive use of the media to highlight the failures of the previous regimes and made much hype of their own future achievements. The gullible electorates believed them and voted them to power. Thus the adage “Publish or perish” still holds good, he added.
Finally he encouraged the participants to begin their journalistic sojourn by contributing news, views and articles to their own institutional newsletters and journals and then venture out as freelance journalists writing to public newspapers and journals.
