Pramila taking notes for a story

Pramila Modachur Krishnan is a senior reporter at the Deccan Chronicle, an English-language daily in Chennai, the capital of India’s Tamil Nadu state. Pramila’s parents are both farmers, and she was the first in her family to get a university education; she has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Now 27, she’s especially interested in reporting about the environment and issues facing women and children. In 2013, she took part in a DW Akademie workshop on environmental reporting in Chennai. Her pluck, resourcefulness and dedication convinced her trainers to recommend she attend the recent UN climate conference in Warsaw. onMedia asked her a few questions about her chosen career.

Why did you decide to become a journalist?

I wanted to be in a job that would provide me the opportunity to contribute to society. And I wanted to learn new things and not get bored by doing the same thing throughout my life. I want every day to be an exciting one and that happens in journalism.

What did your parents and/or friends say when you decided to become a journalist?

My parents are farmers and I was the first person in my family to get a college education. I decided not to take run-of-the-mill courses. When I learned about journalism and communication studies, I thought this would be a good fit. My mother encouraged me as she always believed that I should study what I like and not what others want. But others in the family, including my father, stressed that I should get married since that was the custom in many families. My friends doubted I would get a job.

Do reporters have a good reputation in India?

Yes, particularly women journalists, who are in the limelight now. Several media houses have increased the number of women journalists in the last few years.

What do you like most about your job?

I am learning and contributing to the society. I’m happy when I report about an issue and the government or voluntary organizations react and problems are set right. I am hugely satisfied when people whom I have not even met call me to say thank you for a story which I’ve published and which impacted their lives.

What do you dislike most about your job?

Sometimes I am forced to deliver an incomplete story because of deadlines. But I enjoy my work, so I don’t have many complaints.

What was the most difficult story you have covered?

I worked on an investigative report on how elderly people are killed by their own families. In the south of Tamil Nadu there is an age-old traditional practice under which grown-up children conduct a ritual named “Thalaikoothal,” which involves giving sick elders an oil bath and feeding tender coconut water to them to kill them. I visited the villages and met people who had killed their parents. I met quacks who took money and killed elders with lethal injections. I risked my life posing as the granddaughter seeking help in killing her grandfather. After the story was published, it created ripples across the country and the government came up with a mechanism to stop the murders. Now self-help groups have been formed to protect vulnerable elderly people.

Is there a story that you have covered that has particularly affected you?

The story about the murders of elderly people affected me personally. In covering the story, I saw the problems of senior citizens who could well be considered disabled people. They lose their eyesight, hearing, mobility, and ability to think clearly. I understood that I have a grandfather but didn’t spend much time with him. That story changed things. Recently I published a short story book penned by my grandfather. I encouraged him to read books and write stories. Now, I have become a resource person for many elder groups and help them organize events.

Pramila (left) at a DW environmental workshop

How do you feel you are developing as a journalist and advancing along your career path?

I have widened my perspective from a beat reporter to a senior journalist who can cover topics ranging from social issues, the environment, politics and education. I’m also able to lead media campaigns. For example, my “Green Chronicle” initiative in my newspaper featuring stories on e-waste created new awareness. Through the campaign, three tons of e-waste were collected for safe disposal.

Still, I feel I need training in digital journalism skills and specialized subjects like the environment and health.

You were recently invited by DW Akademie to attend the UN climate change conference in Warsaw. What was the experience like?

I was excited about participating. Covering an international event like that for the first time was thrilling. Thanks to my trainers, I was able to cover it and deliver stories every day for my newspaper.

What did you learn there and how will you use it in your future work?

I was able to break down the science in simple terms for my environment stories. I now understand climate change with a little more clarity than before. Participating in the conference gave me hope that I could specialize in environment reporting.

What kind of equipment do you use in your work?

I use a computer, a camera for photos, voice recorders for interviews, and mobile phone applications like WhatsApp and others for receiving and sending photos and other info from government officials and other voluntary organizations. I use mini-cameras if necessary during investigative reporting.

What are your dreams or goals as a journalist?

In the long term, I want to be an editor and give opportunities to young reporters from rural India. More short terms goals are to learn and update my knowledge in areas like the environment, women and children’s issues, and digital journalism.

Personally, I would love to travel around India in a van to explore and write about people aren’t normally written about. I like to travel, learn new things, meet new people and report previously unreported stories.

Interview: Kyle James

CC image courtesy of victoriapeckham on Flickr

Many traditional newspaper publishers have completely restructured their newsrooms so that their print and online departments now work together. The way that they have done though varies enormously. In some, print and online journalists work side by side; in others, there is no distinction between the two departments at all.

Klaus Meier is a German media expert who has been closely observing exactly how media organizations are integrating their newsrooms. Together with researchers from Spain and Austria, Meier first published a detailed analysis of newsroom convergence in 2008. The team have done a follow up study this year.

DW Akademie’s Steffen Leidel talked to Klaus Meier about what newsrooms look like today and what these changes mean for the journalism of the future.

What are the main differences you found in how newsrooms are converging?

The fully integrated newsroom model completely brings together print and online as well as other digital platforms. It is also very strongly section orientated which means the sections determine the content for the various platforms. As such, the sections function as a type of central desk – they control the work flow, produce content across the various media and determine what goes online. An additional central desk is only for breaking news and news prioritizing.

In the cross-media model, online and print are strictly separated but cooperate closely. This cooperation is ultimately controlled by a highly integrated unit – which has various names such as the newsdesk, the multimedia manager or the multimedia editor. Their function is to see where and print and online can work together and how can they benefit from each other.

Social media tends to be used differently in the two models and this can help understand the difference. In the integrated model, it is the journalists themselves who use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to distribute their stories, collect comments and start discussions. In the cross-media model, it is very much the social media editor who coordinates this. Online journalists will be more likely to use social media and print journalists less likely but it is the social media editors who will have more say in this area.

In this day and age, does it make any sense to still differentiate between print and online journalists?

In the fully integrated model, distinctions between print and online are deliberately avoided and all journalists produce content for all platforms. That means journalists have to keep all of the possible platforms in mind when they are doing their stories and some of this content is then used to for the newspaper.

However, there are also good arguments for keeping a distinction between print and online. Online is a new medium that is rapidly developing and these developments require continuous innovation. It can be difficult to innovate though if staff are tied to meeting daily multiple deadlines. And therefore you could argue that you need to have online journalists who are not only on top of the latest developments but also have the time to stay on top of them so it is better for them to be able to act independently. If a newsroom doesn’t have an online unit, it at least should set up a research and development unit.

What skills do journalists need so that converged newsrooms function well?

It really depends on what kind of newsroom model you have. In the integrated model, ideally all journalists should know how to tell stories online, how to use all of the digital platforms and be proficient in using social media. In addition, journalists also need to be familiar with new technologies and software – for example, print journalists need to know how to use a video camera or how to tell stories using slideshows. In practice though, not all journalists have to be able do everything. Really what is important is finding a team that can cooperate to produce such stories.

So an integrated newsroom means more cooperation and more teamwork?

It’s been obvious for a long time that these new newsrooms require more teamwork. Previously, journalists were so-called “lonely riders” who researched stories and published them under their own byline. This idea of individual authorship is now being superseded by the idea of teamwork and openness. Newsrooms are becoming transparent in that journalists put all their materials into story folders that can be accessed by every other journalist in the newsroom. This idea that it’s a team which researches and exchanges ideas about stories is changing the work culture of journalism.

You’ve been involved in teaching journalism at university for many years. What do all these changes mean for journalism education and training?

That is something we’ve been discussing for many years. In the 1990s, for example, journalism students learned how to do radio and television but they learned these as two separate skills and not in cross-media projects. I think at the very beginning it is still necessary to learn the basic skills of each platform independently from other platforms. But then journalism training needs to incorporate a second step where students practice using these skills cross-medially – for example by telling a complex story in different ways. Because it is only by actually doing it that they get a sense of how to tell a story on various platforms and what type of content is appropriate for each platform.

Journalism schools seem to offer everything though at the moment, from data journalism and VJ training to social media management and community management. Do you have any tips for young journalists trying to decide what they should study?

I think students should know how to do a bit of everything but they have to decide for themselves what they would like to specialize in. There are still students out there who only want to work in TV. If that is the case, then we should make sure that they also know to write a good story for online and radio. So my advice would be to generalize at the beginning of your studies, have a go at everything and try to be proficient in all areas. But then decide where your speciality is and go deeper in story-telling for one platform.

What direction do you think the media is going to take in the future?

I think mobile journalism will develop rapidly in the next two to four years. For example, in Germany, one in five Internet users now has a tablet computer and two out of three have either a smartphone or a tablet, or both. This is an enormous potential market for innovative journalism products. And perhaps this will lead to new business models where users are prepared to pay more for media content. At the moment I am still skeptical about the apps on the market because most of them don’t offer a great deal of additional benefit to users compared to the open web. But I think there is great potential and we’ll see many new technical developments for new kinds of devices that are even easier to use, cheaper and more suitable for the mass market.

Technology is becoming increasingly important but media organizations are finding it difficult to have these kind of technology skills in house. What kind of difference is this making?

Newspaper publishers always used to have their technology – the printing press – under their roof. Now technology is outsourced and it’s the Internet providers and computer companies that are earning money with technology. That is a huge problem and I don’t have a solution. But newsrooms should have some kind of innovation or development department which is removed from the daily production schedule and which spends its time exploring the new devices coming out on the market and the kind of technology these devices use. So my advice is to bring journalists and technical developers together. And secondly, media organizations need to redevelop or renew their content management system so that they can use new media and diverse publication channels in a more flexible way.

Dr Klaus Meier holds the chair for “journalism studies I” at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany. His research explores editorial management, innovations in newsrooms, convergence, online journalism, science journalism and journalism education.

Raúl Peñaranda, Former Director, Página Siete, Bolivia
Newspapers will keep that name for centuries from now. But they won’t be distributed on paper. A more proper name would be “newstablets” or “newsmobiles”. But “papers” will remain. New technologies and the ever-growing number of people all over the world who have access to the Internet and to new mobile devices will make distributing the printed news unfeasible. It is more expensive, affects the environment and is not relevant to younger generations. What will certainly remain is journalism itself – the dissemination through the media of factual, well written, ethically crafted news that is relevant and put into context. So, the future of print is bright – as bright as the screen of whichever device will present the news.

Alina Radu, Director, Ziarul de Garda, Moldova

“It is difficult to say. But there is definitely a future. We journalists working for independent media in Moldova have faced a variety of threats, have been sued and have to go to court every single week to explain again and again why we wrote a certain story about corruption, human trafficking, abuse of public money or the violation of human rights. And after all of this, we now face a new challenge related to print media. All these years we have managed to continue our investigative work at the Ziarul de Garda newspaper in Moldova and I don’t doubt that we have more work to do and more ideas to keep us going.  Yes, Moldovans  have today more Internet devices than flush toilets and Moldova is among the countries with the fastest Internet in the region. But this doesn’t mean print newspapers will disappear any time soon. Maybe more of them will go online but at the moment we still have high levels of corruption, high poverty rates, lack of transparency and poor respect for human rights. This means there will always be teams of restless reporters who will keep newspapers and journalism going for the sake of democracy.”

“Peter Okong’o, Deputy Managing Editor, The Standard, Kenya

Tomorrow’s newsroom will be fully integrated. Online, print, TV and radio will be together with a converged news desk at the center of the newsroom with editors, sub-editors and reporters all sitting together. The Standard in Nairobi, Kenya has already adopted this model and its working fine!”

Murtaza Solangi, Former Managing Director, Media Times and former Director General, Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation

“The newspaper of the future might not be on paper but it will continue to retain the tradition of comprehensive reporting and analysis. It will, however, combine new features such as archives, “editability” and interactivity as well as incorporating audio, video and pictures. Although newspapers of the future might have some sections dedicated to breaking stories and updates, primarily they will provide in-depth stories and more analysis.”

Kenneth Ashigbey, Managing Director & Editor-In-Chief
Graphic Communications Group, Ghana

“The future will require newspaper people to do things differently. It will require the use of a great deal of audience insight and a shift from the “readers’ perspective” to the “audience’s perspective”. It will require redefining the business that we are in from a “newspaper business” to a “content provision business”. Newspaper will have to provide audiences with more than just information, education and entertainment. They will have to become a tool that people live their lives with. This will require an integrated and converged newsroom and management. Also, journalists will no longer be simply print journalist but rather multimedia journalists who produce content for multiple platforms. The future will require telling the day-two-stories better and going beyond reporting the news to producing compelling and exclusive well-researched stories, including investigative stories, which are told with the audience at the center.”

Luz María Helguero, Publisher, El Tiempo de Piura, Peru

“We believe that the future of print is electronic which is why we are trying try to improve our online presence. At the same time, we also have to consider that our printed newspapers may still have a decade or more of life left in them. We believe that the closeness of local newspapers to their local communities is an advantage that we should not lose regardless of the platform we use. This has lead to a total reassessment of our organization so when our newspaper turns 100, we can accompany our readers in the twenty-first century. The rationale of a newspaper – to provide information that society needs for the benefit of those who make up the society- is part of the DNA of our daily paper and this will continue to be our focus.”

Nikola Tomić, Deputy Editor in chief, DANAS, Serbia

“The future of print media is vague and uncertain but its fate isn’t yet decided. Print media will exist as long as the people who want to read them and that’s not such a short period. However, the market is volatile with advertisers switching to online and readers increasingly using digital devices. The survival of print media during these changes depends on their ability to adapt to new global circumstances. Digital forms of content placement and the diversification of business activities should be two main future directions for print media. Also, of the greatest importance is much more active convergence with readers. We need to move out of the “ivory tower” of newsrooms and editorial boards and interact  dynamically with the community. But insisting on high-quality journalism must remain at the core of everything. Regardless of the economic crisis, all activities of print media must be based on providing the best possible, highly professional, journalistic and editorial content.”

Aleksandr Tuzov, Deputy Chief Editor, Vechernii Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

“I believe the future of print journalism is strongly dependent upon the younger generation being interested. In this regard, the example set by the German publication Die Welt in developing a youth publication Die Welt Kompakt is quite significant. Advertisers will also maintain interest in print media since in some countries with developing e-media like Kyrgyzstan, print ads still guarantee higher financial gains.”

Tangeni Amupadhi, Editor, The Namibian, Namibia

“The advent of the Internet may have made it easy for people to get information but it has made it difficult to find quality information. That’s where journalism comes in. More people will become more reliant on journalists to help them figure out what is important and how much of the information they need to interpret to make decisions about their everyday live. Mass news media will be replaced by boutique journalism. I think it will be journalism that pays well because the readers would value the info highly as opposed to what social networks and similar avenues will do. Pity though the newspaper [emphasis on paper] will be hard to find.”

For the Future of Print Journalism workshop, DW Akademie invited newspaper editors from Bolivia, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Namibia, Pakistan, Peru, Serbia and Uganda. The editors also visited the newsrooms of several leading German newspapers to learn about their editorial strategies for the future. Click here for more information about the workshop.
Project team: Oliver Schilling (Project Coordinator), Jutta vom Hofe (Trainer and Project Manager), Peter Berger (Principal Trainer), Patrick Hashingola (Project Assistant)

Authors: Steffen Leidel/Kate Hairsine

Kyle James has been conducting DW Akademie workshops in Asia and Central Asia since 2008, covering radio production, multimedia journalism and print.

The smell was nauseating and the sight quite a depressing one. The ten participants of the Climate Change Workshop in Chennai / India, along with the two trainers and our guide, had just scrambled up to the top of a building to get a better view of the Kodungaiyur dumpyard in the northern part of the city. We were there to see how waste disposal, unregulated construction, and short-sighted transportation and energy policies were harming the environment and contributing to climate change by releasing greenhouse gases and paving over important carbon sinks like wetlands.

Kodungaiyur, an area that once featured marshes and cattle grazing land, had been turned into something more befitting Dante’s Inferno—a hazy landscape of rotting garbage, heavy industry and smoke-belching trucks under a relentless, blistering sun. And, it was all located near the homes of about 100,000 people, almost all poor.

The scene was representative of the myriad environmental problems that India faces, and which are beginning to have real impacts on the wider region. And almost every day during the workshop, the Indian papers carried reports on new environmental problems the country was up against. Chennai’s water table was dropping; fish catches were declining; traffic was increasing. Devastating floods in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand claimed the lives of an estimated 1,000, while more than 2,800 were still missing at this writing. Some experts said that the kinds of intense storms that washed away bridges, temples and homes there were likely to become more frequent due to the changing climate.

The real-world events happening outside our seminar room were motivating factors for the participating journalists’ from India, Nepal and Bangladesh. But so were the things we witnessed first hand—polluted rivers, eroding beaches, coal-fired power plants—as well as the people we talked to whose lives and livelihoods were hurting because of them. In some ways it was a sobering time, but it highlighted the urgency of communicating the consequences of climate change to the larger public, and perhaps convincing policy makers to take serious action.

Author: Kyle James

Active acquisition of knowledge to solve concrete challenges creates confidence. And that’s something you need when you have to teach journalism to a classroom full of young Laotian twentysomethings, as do the instructors at the National University of Laos (NUOL).

These instructors are currently students themselves: they’re taking part in journalism teachers’ training and coaching, which is organized in partnership with DW-AKADEMIE’s Asia team.

At a workshop in December we reviewed some of the progress made so far. “I have more confidence in teaching these subjects now,” said one of the younger colleagues. Others agreed.

One senior lecturer brought along a revamped version of a project the training participants had created the previous September – a newspaper made from scratch. It was a showcase item at NUOL’s 15th anniversary celebration in November.

The instructors-in-training had put tremendous effort into producing it, and that has really paid off in their daily work. Here’s why:

Getting down to basics

The task we had set ourselves was quite simple: Create a newspaper. From scratch. In three weeks time.

There are several good reasons for choosing such an exercise. Creating a newspaper is low-tech. If necessary (and if you don’t mind creating only one copy), it can be done with paper, pens, a scissor and glue.

It’s also very tangible, easy to talk about, perfect for discussions in dual-language settings (in Vientiane we use Lao and English with translation in our workshops).

Most importantly, it’s a very generic form of journalism – and thus a good foundation for discussing the core elements of journalistic work.

Active participation instead of passive listening

Creating a newspaper from scratch turned learning into active acquisition of knowledge to solve concrete challenges. Much better than hearing lectures on writing, style, research, etc.

Among the many questions discussed during the production of the newspaper were issues like “What will be our editorial guideline?” (As opposed to the more passive “What is an editorial guideline and what is it good for?”) “What should our layout look like?” and  “Are we on track time-wise, quantity-wise, quality-wise?”

As a result of such exercises that produce tangible results, the university teaching staff are not only gaining a new understanding of journalism practice itself, but also experiencing first-hand fresh and viable ways of conveying knowledge to their students.

By Daniel Hirschler