7 Journalists Complete AMDF Training on Improved Media Content, Receives Certificate
By Uangbaoje Alex, Kaduna
Seven journalists in Kaduna, at weekend received their certificates for completing Africa Media Development Foundation (AMDF) training on how to improve their job to conform with the contemporary media contents.
The training aimed at acquainting the journalist with skills and knowledge on how to make corrections of general flaws in the contemporary media contents, lasted for 10 months, facilitated by veteran journalists.
Beneficiaries of the training who commended the media development NGO, said the training has helped them know more about development journalism.
According to one of them, David Turaki, the numerous challenges faced in the society and the inability for the citizens to air them out to the government, has made uncountable developmental issues yet to be voiced out for appropriate actions.
“With this training, i can easily talk about the societal ills in a more professional way and be able to hold the government accountable by speaking better and convincingly on how to better the life of the citizens. He added.
Another participant, Hannatu Musa, a communication officer, who also participated in the training, said that the training would help her do more in discharging her duties as a communication personnel.
She also said that the training which included development journalism, investigative journalism and basics in journalism would help her write stories better than she does.
“Before this training, we usually have errors in our grammatical expressions and incoherent writing skills just to make sure the job is done, now we can be able to write in a more coherent and professional way”, Musa said.
Earlier, Executive Director of the Foundation, Mr. Iliya Kure, said journalists who participated cuts across different media houses in Kaduna undergone ten months training by professional journalist and accompanied by interactive sessions to aid sharing of knowledge amongst participants.
“Prior to the training, we understood that there is poor output from news media, as a result of that, we decided to come up with a training program to enhance the capacity of the journalists.
Kure further said that the training would hopefully enhance there writing skills, “we focused more on basic journalism skills, he said.
“What is needed in news writing, the technicalities, development journalism and new media and how they integrate into a changing media land scape.
“You can’t be a journalist and fail to understand the terrain where you operate and the tools of your operations, Kure said.
Kure noted that 12 journalists initially started the training but due to the rigor of their engagement towards ensuring the needed outcome of the set objectives, only seven were able to complete the training successfully.
On his part, Mr. Andrew Fadason who facilitated the training programme, commended the 7 who completed the programme for their committee, resilience and patience throughout the period despite their daily engagements.
He said though the programme didn’t do badly because of the response of some participants inability to complete, but expressed hope that the next phase will become better as the lessons learnt would help in the future.
