Project Title: Journalism Skills Advancement Programme
Project Year: 2019
Project Period: February 2019 – November, 2019
Project Summary: AMDF partnered select media station in Kaduna and mentored 12 green horn reporters on news writing skills. The training focused on building capacity of mentees, especially those without journalism background. They were trained on how to carry out computer aided research for integration, how to mainstream social media into their work, as well as rudiments of data journalism.
It is on record that Nigerian journalists have served their country; many of the nation’s nationalists, like Herbert Hesse Macauley, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, Chief Anthony Enahoro, etc were among them – no wonder the post-independence era produced some of the best and brightest journalists and writers the African continent had seen.
Until recently, majority of the media organisations in Nigeria had fearless journalists and columnists who not only fought against colonialism, but also military regimes; stood against corruption and indiscipline, as well as championed peoples’ rights. Their writings had also prompted national conversations, leading to policy changes. This is because many of the practitioners were intellectuals, who took time to learn the rules of the practice.
At that time journalism was a profession to reckon with, it meant a lot to the nation and to the people. Journalists practiced their craft the way it was meant to be – they had several obligations and responsibilities which included reporting stories ethically and standing by their stories.
Today, the story is different, things have changed; things have gone bad and it has affected the practice badly. The profession is almost in the hand of novice; it is in the hands of people who do not even understand the basic rudiments of the practice, talk less of applying its basic principles.
Many of today’s journalists cannot write correctly – they out of ignorance or carelessness abuse the rules of writing and not subjecting their stories to editorial processes before publishing them.
They write with biased minds, without facts, or depth, or understanding of the subject matter. Worst still, they sacrifice ethics and would for the sake of money sell or kill, or fabricate stories.
This stems from the fact that many who joined the profession have either no journalism or mass communication education, or lack the necessary footing through the expected basic journalism training at the point of entry.
Media employers on the other hand are probably thinking of cheap labour to run their media outfits; yes, this is through the use of persons who are not trained as journalists to work in the media – after all, it is a skill that can be acquired on the job.
No wonder, the output of many media organisations in Nigeria are poor and not meeting the average expected standard.
It was on this, among other reasons that Africa Media Development Foundation (AMDF) came up with the idea of instituting a MENTORING PROGRAMME tagged ‘Journalism Skills Advancement Programme’ to help address some of the journalists’ capacity issues and help improve the standard of the practice in Nigeria at large.
STRUCTURE/STRATEGY
The training was conducted through monthly face-to-face meeting at the AMDF training centre throughout the duration of the programme.
The class was divided into theory and practical sessions;
- During the theory classes, there were lectures, experience-sharing, and question and answer sessions;
- In the practical classes, mentees had hands-on experience on equipment, and also led some of the sessions themselves;
- There were also assignments and test/mock sessions in many forms to assess the depth of knowledge acquired by the mentees.
In the early part of the programme, reports/write-up by other journalists were x-rayed in the practical sessions. Mid-way into the project, reports/write-ups by mentees became the news items x-rayed. This assisted mentees in identifying their weaknesses and worked towards improvements.
FOLLOW UP
In the course of the project, mentees were visited in their various newsrooms, to check how far they had gone in applying the lessons learnt in the class. There was interactive session between the mentor, the mentee and the news manager/controller of their stations.