By equipping journalists with ideas, tips and techniques, the workshop focused on various aspects such as newsgathering, source-finding, brainstorming story ideas, interviewing, ethics and storytelling. “The workshop is about helping journalists tell stories in a better way,” said Ben Williams, a senior journalist who is currently one of the founders of Beyond Broadcasting, an organization which provides editorial, technical and training solutions in the field of media. Williams, who has previously worked with BBC and the UN, has spent two years in Nepal working as the Editor of BBC Media Action’s Sajha Sawal.[break]
“I’m familiar with the problems and difficulties of Nepali journalism but I still think there’s potential. There are lots of problems you cannot do anything about but there are also things that you can do something about. One of those things is to take a few risks and think differently,” said Williams. “Just because something has been done in a certain way for years and years doesn’t mean in cannot be done differently. In fact, it means that now, it should be done differently,” he added. Williams stressed on the need for journalism to evolve and for media organizations to make efforts to be creative. “Nepali people deserve good journalism,” he further continued.
Williams discussed similar ideas during the workshop and acquainted the participants with ways to be creative and to produce interesting stories. “The workshop was very informative and very interactive, unlike other workshops that I’ve been a part of,” said Kalpana Bhandari, who has formerly worked with Spaces Magazine and is currently freelancing. Bhandari, who comes from an architecture background, plans to eventually be involved with architectural research and journalism. She wants to promote architecture via different forms of media. Hence, she applied to the workshop.
A helpful aspect of the workshop, said Bhandari, was the fact that it brought together journalists from three different platforms and hence, journalists who were earlier familiar with only one platform such as the radio or the print, got to know about the organizational structure of other platforms that they hadn’t worked with.
Bhandari further shared, “Apart from conducting interviews and interpreting data, we also learned that as journalists, we need to simplify the way we tell stories. IT’s about what readers want from us and not what we want from the readers. In journalism, the audience always comes first.”
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