Al Jazeera article.

Recently I had the honour of being asked to write a series of articles about the US Presidential Debates and the African
outlook towards them for Al Jazeera.
The first piece just went up and the other panellists make for interesting reading, (my article is also good ;=))
Have a read here and give feedback.
Enjoy.

Tech-Phobia in Newsrooms

The technological divide that exists between the classroom/lecture-hall and the newsroom is one of the greatest challenges we face as young journalists.

 

The phenomenon of social and new media seems to be adopted perfunctorily in news rooms, I mean you will find good connectivity, superb hardware but the usage of the social/new media tools is next to nil.

 

In journalism school you get the idea that if you do not get onto the social media train you might as well be waiting for it on the tracks to run you down.  If like me you read Jay Rosen a lot then you be aware of the cuts that traditional news rooms have to undertake.

 

Now the whole disconnect is when you get into the news room, mentions of twitter elicits blank stares, an explanation does worse.  You start to wonder if truly social media is what it is made out to be.  But at the back of you mind you know that it is.

 

You know that the future of newspapers is online but the news room itself does not seem to realize this.  Even with journalists losing jobs daily, the message does not seem to hit home.  Even to the point that displaying tech-phobia is some sort of honor badge among the ‘veterans’.

 

Funny thing is that when you turn in a report fast enough you now get questions of how you did, then unofficially you become the in-house trainer.  It is for this reason that I think things are looking up, that in time we will take our place in this new digital newsroom though it would be better if it happened a bit faster.

 

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This is cross-posted at the Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists blog 

We need experince!!!!

It’s been a while since I wrote on journalism, seeing as I trained to be a journalist, I have been reading the young journalist blog at journalism.co.uk and I appreciate it for having a place where guys who look at journalism the way I do hang out.

 

I think I’ve wanted to be a journalist for a long while now, after going through the whole law and lawyer-ing phase, I realized that I loved being the one to be the first one out with a story, I love looking for information and I also loved and still do love writing.

 

Fast forward to Uni. where the college though you are study the art of reporting you get to read of newsrooms letting go of staff, implementing the dreaded cost-cutting.  Yeah your articles and stories get published but no one wants to give you a job let alone pay you for your stuff. (though there others who’ll follow up your payment till you get paid) yeah

 

I took a break from Uni. for a year, due to several reasons among them some family stuff,  during this time, I decided to look for a job, and if I managed to get one then I’d do my last semester in the evenings. 

 

In this search I have come to realize that while editors might like you stuff there is also a devil called experience.  That’s what galls me, who in his right mind would expect you to have, two years experience working for a paper when you’ve just graduated from uni. where you were in class full time? and the funny thing here, the university newspaper, blogs and websites don’t count because this are self-publishing platforms.  Some guys forget that they also were once starting out.

 

That’s when I decided to do my own stuff, self-publish, blog like mad, just write, write and write, if a good opportunity comes along yay I’ll take it if it doesn’t then I’ll just continue writing.