PPF Rural Journalism Skills Development Workshop, Jhelum

Date: March 27 – 29, 2004
Location: Jhelum

Jhelum is an important industrial town, located on Lahore – Islamabad national highway. It is known as recruiting ground of Pakistan army servicemen. Jhelum is located on the historic route used by Muslim armies, from Central Asia and Afghanistan to invade India for establishing Muslim rule.

Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) organized a three-day Journalism Training Workshop at Civil Club in Jhelum from March 27-29, 2004. There were 20 participants including 13 men, mostly journalists and 7 women including writers, teachers, social workers, and other educated ladies.

Participants displayed remarkable awareness of social, political and economic issues. They took keen interest in proceedings of the workshop. Mr. Fazal Qureshi, Chief Editor Pakistan Press International (PPI) and Vice Chairperson PPF, and Raja Naubahar, PPI correspondent in Jhelum, were instructors for the workshop. T
he workshop teaching lectures covered subjects as definition of news, news writing principles, concept of inverted pyramid, principles of five Ws and one H.

Each lecture was followed by an open discussion to help participants understand subjects related to journalism and freedom of press. Participants were also taught to write articles, features and letters-to the- editor. There were practical exercises at each step.

The closing session was presided by Ch. Farakh Altaf, Distrtict Nazim Jhelum. He awarded certificates to the participants. In his remarks Ch. Farakh emphasized the importance of highlighting local problems in regional and national newspapers. He expressed the view that more such workshops should be organized in the rural and semi rural areas of Dera Ghazi Khan region. In the end participants filled the evaluation forms and gave valuable suggestions for future workshops.