Journalists@Work: Teresa Temweka Chirwa

In the first of our Journalists@Work series we meet Teresa Temweka Chirwa, an editor at Zodiak Broadcasting Station in Lilongwe, Malawi. Teresa participated in the recent DW Akademie in-house journalism training at ZBS. You can also listen to Guy Degen’s interview with Teresa below to find out more about working as a journalist in Malawi.

Tell us about your radio station.

Zodiak Broadcasting Station is an independent private radio station which started its operations in Malawi in November, 2005. It covers general news and focuses on people living in rural Malawi as its major audience.

ZBS has an independent editorial policy intended to be non-partisan, covering the issues without fear or favour. Most of ZBS’ stories try to give a voice to the voiceless but it also tries to reach out to policy makers.

Many of the station’s programs are in the vernacular, Chichewa, and this ensures that our target audience is able to get the messages being aired.

ZBS has also won a number of industry awards including the best electronic media house of the year from the Media Institute of Southern Africa, Malawi Chapter.

Describe to us your typical work day in the newsroom of ZBS.

A normal work day starts at 7:30 in the morning where reporters convene and conduct the morning editorial meeting. During the meeting, reporters present ideas of stories that they have and we discuss each potential story. At the end of the meeting, we agree on what stories we want to prioritize and the sources we want to talk to.

My role in all this is to ensure the meeting is convened and we have stories that will ‘sell’ our main bulletin. As an editor, I then concentrate on ensuring the sub-editor compiles their bulletin in time to also allow me check it and then give it to the reader 30 minutes before broadcast.

After midday, we relook at the stories that need follow up for the evening and the following morning bulletins. At this time, there is another sub-editor on the desk who compiles the afternoon bulletins.

Our day ends with the 8pm news roundup where we give listeners the major stories of the day.

What sort of challenges do you face working as a radio journalist in Lilongwe, and in Malawi in general?

There are a number of challenges and some of them include enduring a negative attitude from politicians especially those in government; lack of resources; and, challenges to meet deadlines as some sources tend to take long to respond and difficulties to get information from government official as there is no law in Malawi that presses them to give out information.