PDI starts write-along for campus journalists

Cebu City—News, according to 18-year-old Joanne Cutamora, is all about disasters and murder cases presenting the hard and harsh realities of life.

“So I was surprised when I learned that soft news or news that talks about the lives of ordinary people and their struggles can also have a positive impact on other people’s lives,” said Cutamora, a communication arts sophomore of Cebu Normal University (CNU).

Cutamora, who wants to be a filmmaker someday, said this realization was her best takeaway after attending the first Inquirer Write-Along session for campus journalists on Saturday at CNU’s Eva Macaraeg-Macapagal Arts (Emma) Center.

The Inquirer Write-Along program, initiated by the Across the Nation Section, aims to promote editorial excellence and integrity among budding journalists by giving them the opportunity to listen and learn from Inquirer editors and reporters on how to write a story the Inquirer way.

The write-along in Cebu was the first of a series of sessions dedicated to inspire and teach campus journalists how to best tell the Filipino story. It was sponsored by CNU and Cebu Pacific.

Not easy

“Whoever said that to be a journalist is easy should think twice. There are complications in the job and you need to learn a lot to do this job effectively,” said Sean Timothy Salvador, 18.

The third year mass communications student of the University of the Philippines Cebu College (UP Cebu) has wanted to become a journalist ever since he became an associate editor of his high school newspaper.

He said the sharing session of the Inquirer team was different from the usual classroom discussion because it made him picture the real scenario in the life of a journalist.

The Inquirer Write-Along team, led by Jun Bandayrel, national editor, conducted five lecture-workshops that gave students practical tips by following the Inquirer brand of journalism—be first, be fair and be fearless.

Sixteen campus journalists from CNU, UP Cebu College, Southwestern University and University of San Jose-Recoletos joined the lecture-workshops. They will undergo a weeklong field training and practicum (which include conducting interviews and writing stories) up to Sept. 15.

Another session would be held for evaluation and synthesis.

“We hope to strengthen the bond between the newspaper and the campus paper. We are hoping to target more campus papers to be in our network,” Bandayrel said.

This is the Inquirer’s contribution in preparing the next breed of journalists with the paper’s 25 years of successfully telling the Filipino story to the world, he said.

Gary Libby, Inquirer IT head, talked on media convergence and how the newspaper had responded to the changing media landscape by venturing into other media forms beside print.

Robert Jaworski Abaño, Inquirer Northern Luzon assistant bureau chief, gave students a different perspective on the basic news story by going beyond the old school teaching of writing news using the inverted pyramid formula.

“We look for the big picture beyond the ‘he-said, she-said’ journalism,” Abaño told students.

Connie Fernandez, Inquirer Visayas bureau chief,  shared her experience in a session on “Curiosity and Story Ideas” while Inquirer Research head Miner Generalao lectured on “Sources and Online Research.”

“The need of the times is for you to be balanced so the key is to diversify your sources … don’t just rely on the Internet. It is not a replacement to tried and tested means of getting information,” Generalao said.

Nestor Burgos Jr., Inquirer Visayas chief of correspondents, opened his talk on “Interview Techniques” with a role play that showed how an unprepared reporter would act and ask questions.

The Inquirer team also emphasized that accuracy and truth are fundamental principles in practicing good journalism.

Learning

While she still dreams of becoming a filmmaker after college, Cutamora said she is now open to the possibility of becoming a journalist in the future.

“It’s a good thing that I listened to the speakers and opened my eyes to the other side of news. Now I know it is not just about killings and disasters,” she said.

Caesar Ian Bastasa, editor in chief of The Quill, the official publication of Southwestern University, said it was enlightening to hear media practitioners talk about what their job was about.

“This is the first time a media organization reached out to us and taught us tips on how to become better journalists even in our campus papers. We can share this with our staff members,” Bastasa said.

As for his output after the weeklong practicum, Salvador of UP Cebu said he was thinking about writing a piece on how student activists were treated inside and outside the university.

A raw idea, he admitted, but which he plans to transform into a worthwhile news article in the following days.