By Precious Ahiakwo-Ovie
A digital expert, Paul Chimodo, has urged journalists, especially veterans to scale up their digital skills to enable them improve their career prospects and earning potentials .
Chinmodo who noted that ego has prevented some veteran journalists from upscaling their digital skills, said many are stuck in old fashion media practice ,staving them off from reaching their full potentials and becoming visible in the present new media era.
The advice was given at a one-day capacity building workshop on ‘Maximising New Media Platforms’ organised by Step-up for Women In Journalism Initiative (SWIJ), with support from Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) and the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Rivers State Chapter, held in Port Harcourt on Thursday.
“Most journalists do not know how to maximise the new media platforms yet. Ego and pride is not allowing them to learn digital tools from the young generation. This is the major reason they are where they are and it’s not helping to build and improve professional competence in this new media era, ” Chimodo stated.
Chimodo, who highlighted the importance of digital tools in today’s journalism practice, emphasised the need for training and retraining to meet up with current demands of the job.
He posited that most challenges faced by journalists are self-inflicted as they have failed to update themselves on current digital tools. He emphasised the need for journalists to identify the social media tools that aligns with their line of job and build presence on it so as to gain from opportunities that abound from such tools.
He also pointed out that social media has made it easier for journalists to collaborate on stories with other journalists, photographers, and videographers. He said collaborations can help journalists reach a wider audience, tell more complex stories, and provide a more comprehensive perspective on events.
Chimodo listed some ways journalists can utilize digital tools to include; Live streaming, Facebook/Instagram stories, Twitter threads, Podcasts.
Earlier in her address, Team Lead for SWIJ, Ann Godwin, said the training is targeted at scaling up the digital skills of ournalists especially female reporters to enable them grow their professional competence and match with their international counterparts.
She said the era where journalists rely on their years of practise, experience and unnecessary competition for successful practice is gone.
“The workshop today is targeted to improve our skills. We are now in an intelligence generation. Considering the dynamic nature of the media industry today, you can agree with me that a lot is changing. It is no longer the way it used to be 10, 20 years back. There is a lot of new things happening and you need to scale up.
“We need to step up, to align and to flow and grow our career because if you are not uping your ante you will be left out,” she posited.
Highpoint of the workshop, was training on entrepreneurial skills by Dr. Ijeoma.Tubosia, a broadcast journalist and an entrepreneur.
Tubosia, who trained participants on Turban hat making, emphasised the need for women journalists to learn skills and have multiple sources of income in order to meet up with the economic demands in the country.
On her part, Constance Mega, a broadcast journalist with Nig Info, PortHarcourt, who took the participants on Enhancing Speaking Skills, said constant rehearsals, practicing will improve their speaking skills.