By Nurfatihah Irdina
GAMBANG, 24 February 2020: Students were thrilled with activities held at the Journalism Workshop 2020 here last Saturday (22 February) for it was a form of escapism from their class assignments.
It was evident from the cheerful expressions of the 30 participants who were present at the workshop held in CFS IIUM, Gambang, organised by the Language Society (LANCE) and Human Sciences Society (FOCHUSS) in collaboration with IIUMToday.
To ease the tension as it was a morning event, the workshop began with an introductory speech about IIUMToday by former student Managing Editor, Alya Nadiah, and the head of the news portal’s public relations Nurina Farzana Zahra. It was followed by a short lecture on the ‘Basics of Journalism’, followed by hands-on activities that took place in a class which accommodated up to 50 participants, including programme committees.
Participants were tasked to construct two sentences based on an event and write an article in a group of nine where students role played various characters (as spokesperson, eye-witness) according to different situations and was interviewed.
Despite this semester being the last semester for first-intake students in CFS IIUM, many participants are addled by journalism as a profession. Hence, students disregard journalism entirely as an option in their long list of ambitions in the pursuit of searching for course-related professions in the future.
In resolving this issue, IIUMToday as an the university’s established journalism platform, has conducted this workshop in the hope to give light on the importance of journalism as well as to train students to hone their soft skills and emulate a professional journalist.
Several goals of this workshop were achieved.
Athirah Fathiah, one of the participants of the workshop said that she was intrigued by this workshop because prior to this, she lacked knowledge regarding the whereabouts and what it means to be a journalist.
“Writing news is not as hard as I thought as long as it is embedded with substance of truth and clarity when collecting facts and data while focusing on an angle, you are good to go!” she said.
She said this workshop covers all aspects, including teaching journalist and non-journalist wannabes to write with integrity and cultivate a sense of professionalism when delivering news.
“Youth should have journalism skills because it teaches us to be more ethical in writing any information,” she added.
Despite being booked on weekdays, more students are using their free time during the weekends by attending beneficial talks, one of which is the journalism workshop.
The participants involved were mostly students from arts and humanities courses, however an economics student was also present at the workshop since it is open to all students of CFS IIUM. ***