PPF Journalism Training Workshop, Hyderabad

Date: April 10, 2005
Location: Latifabad

Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) organized a Journalism Training Workshop at Latifabad; district Hyderabad, for local journalists and educated women Sindh from 10-12 April 2005.

The workshop was held at the auditorium of a local women college. It was attended by 26 participants in which there were 16 women and 10 male journalists.

The PPF instructors’ team comprised of Mr.Fazal Qureshi Vice Chairman PPF, and senior journalist from Hyderabad Mr. Abbas Kasser. The workshop started with Mr.Fazal Qureshi’s opening remarks in which he detailed participants on the objective of the workshop.

The first working session began with the discussion among participants on differences between literary writing and journalism writing. This was followed by explanation of the principles of news writing. Followed was a questions and answers session covering a wide range of subjects relating to news writing.

Next session was a practical exercise on news writing. The participants were given basic material and asked to write a news item with a proper news lead. A discussion was followed on the principles of news ethics and values that make news more or less important for the newspapers. The discussions involved all aspects of journalism ethics including complaints about yellow journalism.

This was followed by lectures on article and feature writing step wise All parts of the lecture were followed by practical exercises. The participants were then given a practical exercise of actually writing an article on one of the subject selected by them. There was a detailed review of the articles produced by the participants. Afterwards an open discussions followed in which the strengths and weakness of the articles were brought to light.

The last session consisted of a lecture on importance of maintaining reference records on subjects of interest to the writers. The participants were then given evaluation forms and asked to com
ment on the quality of the workshop and any suggestions they might have for further improvement.

Ms. Nishat Fatima, a teacher, said that the workshop was good but if its duration could be increased, the participants could gain more knowledge and practice in the field of journalism writng.

Ms. Naheed Akhter, a college lecturer said that the skills and knowledge imparted in the workshop were so good and clear that I could now use them for writing articles for newspapers.

Mrs. Nabila Erum, a social worker, said this workshop had given us the awareness and knowledge to be able to write for newspapers and I suggest that more such workshops should be held in our city.

Mr. M. Nasiruddin Rahi, reporter Hurmat Karachi said such workshops should be held more frequently because they are useful in building up writing skills of journalists and educated women. He said that men and women participants of the workshops would now be able to write on various issues in the newspapers.

Mr.Shabbir Ahmed Tabish, Bureau Chief Daily Hurmat, Hyderabad said such workshops are useful in capacity building of men and women for writing for newspapers. They are also useful to equip women to play their due role in improving the quality of life of their society.

The Chief Guest at the closing session was Professor Rehana Hafeez Arain, Principal, Government Girls Degree College Latifabad. She appreciated the fact that PPF had organized the workshop for men and women at Latifabad. She said according to the feedback she had received the workshop had been very useful for its training content.

She specially welcomed the inclusion of educated women in the workshop to provide them skills for projecting issues in the national newspapers from women’s viewpoint. She warmly praised the PPF program and expressed the hope that more such programs would be organized.Professor Rehana Hafeez Arain then distributed certificates among participants.