Media Expert Urges Female Journalists In Rivers To Create Good Contents

Edith CHUKU

Female journalists in Rivers State have been charged to generate good contents in order to create a niche for themselves in the journalism profession.

This charge was given by a digital media expert, Mr. Chimodo Paul, at a one-day capacity building workshop held on Thursday, at the NUJ Press Center, Moscow Road, Port Harcourt.

The seminar tagged: “Maximizing New Media Platforms: Upscaling digital, entrepreneur skills of journalists” was organized by the Step-up for Women in Journalism Initiative SWIJ, with support from Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism WSCIJ, and the Nigerian Union of Journalists NUJ, Rivers State chapter.

Encouraging the women at the programme, Chimodo urged them to scale up their digital skills to enable them improve their career prospects and earning potentials.

He expressed the dismay that ego had prevented some veteran journalists from upscaling their digital skills which he said had deprived them from reaching their full potentials and becoming visible in the present new media era.

The media expert urged those stuck in old fashion media to start maximizing the social media tools. He challenged the women to invest in themselves by acquiring good digital gadgets, subscribe to online trainings, sponsor their good contents on social media platforms.

According to him, “most journalists do not know how to maximize the new media platforms yet. Ego and pride is not allowing them to learn digital tools. This is the major reason they are where they are and it’s not helping to build and improve professional competence in this new media era.

“There is need for training and retraining to meet up with current demands of the job. Most challenges faced by journalists are self-inflicted as they have failed to update themselves on current digital tools. Journalists have to identify the social media tools that aligns with their line of job and build presence on it so as to gain from opportunities that abound from such tools.

“Social media has made it easier for journalists to collaborate on stories with other journalists, photographers, and videographers. Collaborations can help journalists reach a wider audience, tell more complex stories and provide a more comprehensive perspective on events.”

He went further to explain some of the digital tools and ways female journalists can utilize the tools. “We have content management tools like wordpress, Joomla, they are very common and do more than blogging in content management. We have digital visualization tools, video and audio production tools.

“Some of the social media tools are instagram, facebook, twitter(X), podcast. You can do live streaming, adopt the user generated content approach, try to create brand for yourself, choose platforms you can handle, be consistent and always put out content.”

Earlier in her address, Team Lead for SWIJ, Ann Godwin, said the training was targeted at scaling up the digital skills of female reporters to enable them grow their professional competence and match with their international counterparts. 

She said, “the workshop today is targeted to improve our skills. We are now in an intelligence generation. Considering the dynamic nature of the media industry today, you can agree with me that a lot is changing. It is no longer the way it used to be 10, 20 years back. There is a lot of new things happening and you need to scale up.

“We need to step up, to align, to flow and grow our career because if you are not uping your ante you will be left out. You have to challenge yourself, improve your skill, take advantage of opportunities as they come, be deliberate about how you want your career to go. The best wat to go ahead is to get started.”

Highpoint of the workshop, was training on entrepreneurial skills by Ijeoma Tubosia, a broadcast journalist and an entrepreneur. 

Tubosia, who trained participants on Turban hat making emphasized the need for women journalists to learn skills and have multiple sources of income in order to meet up with the economic demands in the country.

On her part, Constance Mega, a broadcast journalist with the Nigeria Info Port Harcourt, who spoke on enhancing speaking skills, explained that constant rehearsals and practice would improve their speaking skills.

Step-up for Women in Journalism Initiative is an association established to develop leadership capacity of female journalists, provide mentoring support and guidance for media professionals, provide networking opportunities, create access to training and skill development and build global news room champions.