City People, a celebrity journal, holds a training seminar for its reporters and challenges other media houses to do the same
By Tokunbo Olajide
Publisher of City People, Seye Kehinde, is disturbed by the steady decline of standards in journalism practice in Nigeria. He has, however, resolved to reverse the trend. Just as charity begins at home, Kehinde has chosen to start retraining his editorial staff, through a seminar series he recently instituted and challenged other media houses to do the same. “There should be more emphasis on professionalism and excellence in the industry, and journalists should be able to hold their own anywhere,” Kehinde said at the opening of the workshop last Tuesday. The publisher plans to make the seminar a regular affair by bringing accomplished journalists to train reporters of his celebrity magazine.
The City People boss believes that the lack of regular training and retraining of journalists was responsible for poor quality of news items now being offered. He also blamed the trend on the dearth of specialised journalism training institutes, the likes of the defunct Times Journalism Institute, which offered first class training in the past. Kehinde, who passed through the institute, said he benefited from the excellent training it offered then.
The resource person at the first edition of the seminar series, Babajide Kolade-Otitoju, Senior Editor of TheNEWS magazine, took participants through a three-hour session of “How To Report and Write Well.”
The editor said “journalists continue to repeat their errors” because they were not being constantly trained and retrained by their employers.
In the first part of his presentation, which dwelled on reporting well, Kolade-Otitoju stressed the need for journalists to properly determine the news and the right target audience. He said their chances of getting award-winning news stories depend, among others, on their inventiveness, courage and ability to follow up. He explained that a good reporter must be able to cultivate reliable news sources. “A reporter is as good as the sources he has,” he said, but cautioned on verifying information given by sources to avoid being misled. On writing well, Kolade-Otitoju charged journalists to write in concise and simple words, avoid spelling errors, as well as pay attention to details and correct use of grammar.
Commenting on the disturbing descent to the use of bad English in newspapers and magazines, he frowned at the general use of tautologies, which he said diminishes writers. Some of the 90 examples of tautologies he listed included “absolute perfection” and “joined together,” which should simply have read: “perfection” and “joined” respectively.
“Words are the tools of our (journalism) trade, so we must use them correctly,” he counselled.
More importantly, he said journalists would write better if they equip themselves by reading widely. “An un-reading journalist is doing himself a big harm,” he maintained.
The seminar held at the City People Plaza in Gbagada, Lagos.
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