Blogs will raise the future professional journalists
Recently, I was surprised to see my post - about the annual address of the President to the Parliament - published on Oasis website which took it from the other website SNGnews.ru, and thankfully both of them made a reference to our website. The funniest thing here is that I started writing that post in Russian with the following words - after a long period of silence on this blog… They made no editing to that post and published it as one of their analytical articles.
I did pay much attention to that case but today again I saw my post about poverty in Tajikistan on SNGnews.ru, where I summarize IRIN articles. I’m not a professional journalist but when my posts about Tajikistan are placed on the websites where supposedly should be published the articles of professional journalists it says that the Tajik media is really having a problem with journalists.
Recently IWPR reported on the shortage of journalists in Tajikistan. It reported that…
…one major reason for this is that university journalism courses are under-funded and use old-fashioned teaching methods, and are failing to produce enough graduates with the skills to slot into the vacancies.
This is probably true about all the professions in Tajikistan, not only journalism. Most of the universities in Tajikistan are under-funded and the quality of education bitterly suffers. However, I mostly agree with Marat Mamadshoev, the editor of Asia Plus newspaper, who said in his interview to IWPR said that…
…one of the main problems with training is that it is centred on theory, not practice.
Some of experts say in the article that lack of cooperation between the universities and the media organizations is another big problem. I think this is also true but it can be easily solved with the help of new media. Students of journalism can start building their capacity as future professional journalists with the help of blogs. The only problem is Internet connection. But I think that this problem is less challenging then getting in direct cooperation with local media. The young journalists can get involved into blogging community and show their capabilities as good writers.
on May 24th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Therefore, …
on May 28th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
i like the article on this site. they are all to the point without any bs. regarding the journalist situation …. i think being a an honest and serious journalist in tajikistan is equivalent to committing a suicide..
on May 30th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Hi, as somebody who has been teaching young journalists in central Asia for a deacde, I can testify that the biggest problem without any doubt is what the young people are taught at university (so-called ‘journalism faculties’, as well as ‘related’ departments of so-called ‘political science’, ‘economics’, ‘law’ and so on). Wehnever I ‘get my hands on’ a young journalists I spend a good deal of time on DE-learning, trying to make them realise that no, journalism is NOT Pravda in the 1980s… no, it IS allowed to have question the opinion of the prez and his croonies… and yes, therefore, it IS imperative to use more than one source for a story etc etc etc…. Personally, I would suggest to CLOSE all these so-called ‘departments” and ‘faculties’…..
In case you would like to have a look at what brilliant work young people - call them journalsit or whatever, most importantly they are ACTIVE - CAN do, please have a look at twoof the projects I am involved in:
www.nashaversia.net
www.freedolina.net
on May 30th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Michael Andersen,
I can see the problem perfectly and completely, after all, the university resources used in university haven’t been actually “really” revised and updated since the soviet union. You might imagine what journalists were taught during the soviet era.