Mobile Journalism Workshop for Journalists

Media is called the fourth important pillar of democracy. Since ancient times the media has played an important and inseparable role in the democratic society. Before the advent of electronic media, print media played an important role in disseminating information to people.

Over the years, a wide variety of news media like the press, television, radio have been used for communication. As technology advances, news media platforms have evolved and become more digitized. New types of news media platforms are emerging. Mobile Journalism is one such new media which is becoming mainstream. More and more journalists are getting into mobile journalism. Mobile journalists are yet to acquire the attention and importance the television journalists with big cameras receive. As a result, most of the young mobile journalists do not receive any field work training. At a time like this, a four-day long virtual workshop titled “Mobile Journalism Workshop” has been arranged for independent journalists, youths, mobile content creators, media professionals from 1st July to 10th July. Over four dozen participants from all over the country joined this workshop.

Preneur lab Youth & Innovation Trust and Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Bangladesh (FNF Bangladesh) are jointly organizing a virtual summit on journalism and media called the “Future of Media Summit” and the Mobile Journalism Workshop was arranged as a part of this initiative. The main objective of this summit is to equip journalists with digital tools and train them to counter fake news, bring new kinds of media and technology to the media mainstream, discuss media freedom and freedom of expression & opinion. Omar Mostafiz, programme manager of FNF Bangladesh; Mr. Arif Nezami, co-founder of Preneur Lab; Rakhshanda Rukham, co-founder of Preneur Lab were also present in the workshop.

The Mobile Journalism or MOJO Workshop by Preneur Lab and FNF Bangladesh trained participants in mobile journalism to enhance their skills to create broadcast-quality multimedia content using portable devices. The four-day long workshop was mentored by industry experts and senior journalists. The mentors were respectively Mr. Harun-Ur Rashid, bangladesh correspondent of DW; Mr. M.M. Badsha, assignment editor of Bangla TV; Mr. Maksud Un Nabi, senior reporter of Channel24; Mr. Sabbir Ahmed, lead mobile journalist of Bangladesh Times and Mr. Unus Raju, senior joint news editor of Jamuna TV. The mentors trained participants based on their experience in the field.

The participants learned visual storytelling format, mobile journalism work-flow, framing and shooting using smartphones, shoot divisions and use of mojo apps among other core subjects of the mojo module.

One of the mentors and senior journalist Harun Ur Rashid believes that, “Mobile journalism is the future of journalism”. The organizers Preneur Lab and FNF Bangladesh vowed to regularly arrange such activities to serve and to make a good impact on Bangladesh’s media future.