Tuesday, September 23, 2008 Need for journalists to keep up with technology, train students in craft pushed
INSTEAD of newspapers competing with online news, both should be convergent with each other. Besides, newspapers are not going anywhere, at least not yet.
“A chunk of the reading public wants to read leisurely before sleeping or for staying longer in the toilet,” said Glenda Gloria, ABS-CBN News Channel chief operating officer and Newsbreak online magazine managing editor.
“Did radio die when the television was born? With cable, did we stop buying DVDs?” asked Mel Velasco Velarde, Philippine Commissioner to Unesco and vice chairman of the Information Capital Technology Ventures.
Gloria and Velarde were speakers during yesterday’s forum on Media and Technology at the Marcelo B. Fernan press center. The activity was part of the Cebu media’s celebration of the 14th Press Freedom Week.
The two gave their reactions to a question posed by a print journalist who raised fears that newspapers are slowly dying because of the influx of online writing.
Difference
“Not in the next few years, maybe in the next few decades,” Gloria continued. “Maybe in the future, there will be a niche market that will cater to print media. But books are still here because books have a different texture.”
Gloria said though that newspapers have to keep up with technology. The same with journalists—they need to adapt to the generation of online writing or blogging.
But why train in a new medium when specialization happens to be in print media?
“Because that’s the future, you just have to embrace it,” Gloria replied.
This excited Edwin Javier Jr., a third year journalism student from the University of the Visayas, who now expects a wider field in which to practice his future profession.
“I am now encouraged to possibly try the online work because I am more fitted to online means,” Javier told Sun.Star Cebu.
Javier admits to being a blogger.
Blogging has also become an important criterion to Velarde and Gloria in terms of hiring personnel. They spoke in front of future journalists—journalism and mass communication students—and media practitioners.
Gloria explained that blogging and reading blogs talk about a person’s dynamics.
But the basic requirements remain to be initiative, aggressiveness and passion.
During the interaction, a University of the Philippines in the Visayas Cebu College (UPVCC) student asked if there is a need to upgrade the journalism and mass communication curricula.
Help schools
Velarde observed that while there is major change in the industry, schools are slow in adapting.
“Help the school…,” Velarde said in encouraging the students to form a club and aid the school.
Mayette Tabada, a lecturer from UPVCC and St. Theresa’s College and a Sun.Star Cebu columnist, sees the need to revive the curricula but admits there are restrictions.
An upgrade to keep up with technology also means an upgrade in facilities.
“The faculty has to upgrade itself. It also helps if working journalists lecture in school as well—journalists giving back. Seminars also help,” Tabada said.
Not all students who take up mass communication or journalism courses, however, want to end up working as journalists.
But the forum, said Eunice Borlasa, 17, and Donna Faye Laayon, 16, both from the UPVCC, gave them a glimmer of hope that they might just join the Cebu Press Freedom Week in a few years as journalists.
“It encouraged me in a way and it helps that the speakers pointed out this generation’s advantages in spreading information,” said Borlasa. (JGA)
