Journalism exposure to benefit students

By Aisyah Farhana Mohd Fisal

GOMBAK, 13 March 2021: The experiences gained through their exposure in IIUMToday will go a long way to benefit the students in the future, the portal’s editor, Mr. Aznan Mat Piah told a news training session on Friday (12 March).

He said their participation in IIUMToday will provide them the opportunity to learn to organise their thoughts and develop their thinking skills through observation and paying attention to details when carrying out their tasks in news reporting and news writing.

He shared this view with aspiring student journalists who have just joined the campus portal to encourage and motivate them to contribute effectively towards IIUMToday. He said, “Writing is something that you need to put into practice in order to train yourself to express your thoughts on certain topics or issues which will be useful when you are out in the industry.”

“You will learn to organise your thought with clarity or to make a better sense of what constitutes news worthy, priority and significance,” he added.

Mr. Aznan also stressed the importance for new journalists to do fact-checking in ensuring accuracy when reporting a news item.

Meanwhile, the editor of IIUMToday’s Malay column, Mr. Amran Baharum advised the new journalists to look for an experienced journalist and try to emulate his or her writing style as this method “can be considered as a learning process through reading the journalist’s writing”.

“Pay attention on how the journalist constructed sentences and how he or she cited examples in the write up,” Mr. Amran said. He shared his views in the morning slot of the news training session.

“Writing won’t make us rich but we need to remember writing makes us rich with knowledge,” Mr. Amran said as he apprised the new journalists to keep on writing and improving.

Besides, Mr. Amran noted that students need to use their brains and ability in language and also the skills in composing sentences properly in order to produce good writing.

Organised by IIUMToday, the training session was aimed to expose the new journalists to the principles and practice of news and feature writing and also to guide them in carrying our their tasks.

The event was conducted through Google Meet application and had drawn a total of some 20 participants among the students. ***

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