Media workshop to empower journalists
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Tuesday March 21, 2017 15:07
Speaking at a press briefing on Friday, the chairman of MISA Modise Maphanyane, said the workshop that would be held next week (27 -28) is a follow up from the April 2016 workshop that was organised by The Voice newspaper.
He explained that the purpose of that workshop was to provide a platform for the various stakeholders to work together to exchange ideas, think through and come up with practical, mutually acceptable solutions beneficial to the media sector in Botswana.
“The goal of this workshop is to work collaboratively to upgrade standards in the newsroom in particular, but also in advertising, marketing, management and leadership development in general.
Its objectives are to identify problems and barriers affecting the training and development of journalists and other media professionals in both the public and private sector, to discuss approaches to enhancing quality standards through academic training, cadet training and on-the-job training or attachments or internships and to appreciate the issues of quality standards and accreditation as viewed by the regulatory authority that is Botswana Qualifications Authority,” he said.
Maphanyane added that through the workshop, they aim to identify opportunities for joint resource mobilisation between training institutions and media houses in the local and international market.
He added that they would like to address issues in ways which media houses could harness reporting and marketing research to improve their market profile, both in terms of information dissemination and product offerings.
For his part, MiMS consulting communication and management expert, Methaetsile Leepile said the workshop would touch on key areas like academic training, more especially University degrees and diplomas.
He explained that even though most of the veteran reporters did not go to tertiary education, the quality of reporters back then was excellent as compared to today.
“We feel that it is high time students, lecturers of media come under one roof to identify the gaps that are in our media industry and come up with strategic way we can close those gaps.
We have realised that most of our tertiary institutions do not have local material. They teach their students about journalism taught overseas. We think its time that they engage local veteran journalists to guide them on how to report local news,” he said.
Leepile added that it was high time local media had the centre for continuous training where media practitioners could be groomed and grilled.
He added that they needed specialised journalists who could report on different sectors such as health, education, art, law and others.
“We want to have people who can challenge these specialised professions and interrogate issues with good faith.
We have so much outage in our media. We want to be able to keep our media practitioners by giving them motivation so they can be passionate of their jobs,” he said.