By Aznan Mat Piah
Our news portal IIUMToday will soon see a fresh line-up in its structure following the completion of my term as the portals editor-in-chief that coincides with my retirement from the teaching post at the university end of July this year.
With the new structure, it is expected that students will have greater involvement in the running of the portal with clear guidance from the lecturers who are appointed to the new editorial posts. The decision to create a second level in its structure from amongst students stems from the desire to see students recruited into the editorial board strengthen their journalistic skills as well as to gain more exposure to writing and editing.
Their active involvement would serve as a training ground for students to grasp and improve on their journalistic skills and knowledge to benefit them in the long run when they join the media industry. To meet the needs, two additional posts of editorial assistants are created, in addition to the existing board members comprising student journalists and news coordinators.
At the lecturers level there will be two posts of sub-editors created who will be responsible to oversee news and feature sections respectively. The meeting held on Friday (3 June) morning chaired by the portals coordinator was intended largely to thrash out the structure, flow chart, and the whole process to make further improvement on managing the news portal.
Two senior academics from the Department of Communication, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aida Mokhtar and Dr. Nerawi Sedu are expected to assume their responsibilities as sub-editors, responsible for the editing work and news supervision. The present coordinator, Dr. Wan Norshira Wan Mohd. Ghazali, is expected to assume the post of the editor-in-chief, apart from continuing in her present post as the portals coordinator. Mr. Amran Baharum will hold on to his post as editor of IIUMenulis (Malay section) until he goes on a retirement at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the student managing editor, Muhammad Luqman Hakim Mahari who has been in charge of coordinating the assigning of news coverage and publishing of news, will stay in his present post until a new name among the student main board has been identified to replace him later.
On reflection, the task of leading the editorial job since we started the news portal in April 2014 has been a challenging one. The purpose of setting up the news portal was an idea mooted by Prof. Dato Sri Dr. Syed Arabi Idid to serve as a useful platform to train our communication students to put into practice their journalism skills in reporting and news writing based on the theories and concepts they learn in class. After all, journalism is best learned through practical work not just learning the principles. We are proud to see those who participated actively in the editorial board have greatly benefited from their experience with us in terms of their journalism skills.
Hence, the task that lie with me over the years since its setting-up has been in getting the students fully motivated in carrying out their assignments such as reporting, filing and writing stories, teaching them to pick and develop interesting leads, and to present the contents based on certain journalistic standard and expectation. They are reminded from time to time to get their stories and articles written and published on time. Speed and accuracy should always be observed to ensure newsworthiness and credibility of the stories are maintained.
While trying to ensure that the news portal is run efficiently, I noticed the constraints and limitations faced as the same students in the editorial board are not there permanently as they would graduate and leave the university. So, basically the active ones are those in their first and second year with a few or less of them in the third or final year.
Realising this, the news portals coordinator must conduct fresh training every year to provide guidance to the new intake of journalists. The training programmes are run on a continuous basis to ensure a certain standard of reporting is maintained. Efforts are also made to send students for attachment with the media organisations like Bernama, New Straits Times and The Star to acquire the real professional exposure and experience. These initiatives should be continued.
During the early years of its establishment, the success of the training programmes for student journalists were largely attributed to the initiatives taken by Dr. Aini Maznina A. Manaf (now Assoc. Prof. and Deputy Dean of AbdulHamid AbuSulayman Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences), the portal’s advisor then, through cooperative efforts with media organisations.
The most challenging aspect of the task is to get the students to write a good lead with the view to entice readers to read our portal. Once they can overcome the lead, they should not face much problem to proceed with writing the body and the ending part of the story.
In fact, I do not face much problems with students who already have had their stints as student journalists and had acquired journalism skills from the experts. Many of them have proven themselves well. But the problems are with those who are new and do not have much experience and exposure. Obviously, they would take some time to get used to writing news or articles and acquire the right skills to do it. More often than not, stories written by the new reporters need to be rewritten or improvised, but students would have to learn fast to acquire the traits.
Another thing is to keep reminding the students to ensure accuracy of the facts written by checking with the relevant sources as credibility should be held high in their reporting. This is something students need to pay attention to so that they would be able to communicate the right facts and details to bring confidence to the readers.
The experience that I went through has often taken me to stay up late at night to clear the news items and stories submitted by the student reporters. It is understandable that the news are often filed at night because students must attend lectures during daytime, and for most of them, the only time they could finish writing and submitting their stories is between 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. By the time I get to clear their stories its almost 12 midnight, sometimes even stretching up until 2 a.m. the next morning when the stories reached me past 12.05 a.m. especially when the university conducted major event like convocation ceremonies.
Convocation ceremonies are interesting times filled with memories to take away from the university and often there are so many human interest stories to capture from the graduands, ranging from their journey as students, their campus experience, and issues and challenges faced, to what achievement means to them and their family. There are tears and joy to reflect, and student reporters are told to capture such emotions and feelings shared by the graduands. Apart from that, there are serious stuff coming from the universitys president, rector, and other invited guests and personalities in the form of policy speeches and statement that carry useful contents in the form of advice for our readers. All of these need to be highlighted and students must learn to interpret and report wisely.
Similarly, activities of the student associations and clubs, especially those of the IIUM Student Union, are given prominent coverage as we see such activities would encourage students’ involvement in leadership role and in exercising their democratic rights to participate in student election.
The same goes with academic programmes conducted by IIUM or other similar institutions often get to be covered by the news portal, such as seminars or webinars that saw the participation of academics, experts and practitioners in various fields.
Running a news portal needs to follow the norm and trend of the newspaper, where speed should be of concern. So, the students will have to be motivated to complete their story for the day. I believe, to show the way, the lecturer who performed the editors role must set an example, only then, the students are motivated to stay up to finish writing their stories on time. To do this, I have set a certain standard where students should try to meet that expectation.
The editorial team should always be highly motivated to keep up with the spirit in meeting the expectation. Students too are always made to feel the pressure of working in media setting or ambience so that they would learn to build their strengths and resilience while studying, as this should serve a good practice to work in the media industry upon graduation.
The students should feel motivated and always have a critical mind over what they have read or discovered. They must have the curiosity to explore more in covering their assignments. Mostly as the editor, you need to provide a clue as to the subjects or topics that student reporters should cover.
It takes a lot of initiative on the part of the editor to boost the morale of the student reporters and to encourage them to remain motivated. For example, efforts to trigger the students interest to carry out their assignments and to identify certain perspectives or to highlight certain personalities that require reporting or profiling to be done. You need to push the students to follow current affairs and developments. There are so many subjects and activities that take place within the various departments and kulliyyah in the university that students can cover, they only need to be more creative and proactive to get the tasks done.
Over the years since its establishment I am happy to see the news portal has expanded its coverage extending beyond the campus, covering also developments taking place at the national and international levels, which we think have implications on the students, the academia, and the community that the university served. The past two years that the nation went through during the COVID-19 pandemic have been in our news coverage as well. The portal continues to report on the transition that we are now moving towards endemicity with the opening of our borders and economy which affects our campus community.
Besides regular news items and developments cited above, our news portal continues to receive articles and write-ups in the form of guest submission or contribution from both lecturers and students from various kulliyyah, not only from Gombak, but also from other campuses in Kuantan and Pagoh. These articles gave highlights on various topics and perspectives not only from the academic point of view, but also from the community and social dimensions that kept our readers informed. We would continue to welcome readers to contribute their articles.
The write-ups on diverse topics received from these sources had in fact enhanced the richness of our content and coverage. It is hoped that with the restructuring of the editorial board, students will gain the necessary exposure and experience to handle the stories first hand before they get to be examined and approved by the editors.
I would like to thank all those who have given me their support and assistance in ensuring the success in running the news portal when I was at the helm. Special thanks to the Head of Communication Department, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zeti Azreen Ahmad, for giving me the opportunity to serve IIUMToday from its beginning, and for all the encouragement she had extended. This in a small way provided me the chance to contribute to the campus community and society.
Those students who have been under my guidance would probably realise that in all intents and purposes, they are meant well to bring about quality improvement to the news portal. To some of them, I might appear to be harsh or brutal at times in getting them to improve on their stories, nevertheless, my sincere intention is meant to uplift their standard of performance which is very much expected when they graduate to join the industry.
I wish the new editorial team all the best in their new task. Meanwhile, I will remain behind the scene until my leaving the university for good, end of July. ***