By Rene V. Carbayas
ISABELA CITY, Basilan –
Aspiring journalists of the different high schools in Sulu underwent a two-day
training-workshop on Campus Journalism held at the Sulu Area Coordinating
Center (SACC) over the weekend.
Around 100 participants consisting of some 85
student-journalists from participating schools and their school paper advisers
as well as representatives from select government and non-government institutions
attended the training-workshop.
Sulu Communicators Network President Sonny Y.
Abing-III said “the training-workshop was conducted for the youth of Sulu in
recognition of their respective roles in the society,” hoping that they will
also recognize their responsibilities to their community.
“You were called ‘the hope of the nation’
because of your immense potential to correct the mistakes of your society. And
this [the training] is an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past,
through writing [good stories] about Sulu,” he said.
Abing thanked the organizers, especially the
Philippine Information Agency-Zamboanga – Basilan-Sulu-Tawi-Tawi (PIA-ZBST)
information center and he was hopeful that more training related to journalism
will be organized in Sulu in the future.
Meanwhile, PIA-ZBST Information Center
Manager Felipo Dave G. Malcampo also acknowledged the role of the youth in
nation-building, especially in expressing the young people’s thoughts and
aspirations through journalistic writing.
He said the seminar intends to provide free
journalism training to high school students in order to help improve their
communication skills and knowledge through writing news and feature stories as
well as editorials. The participants were also acquainted with media ethics and
certain rules governing journalism.
Moreover, Kurt J. Hoyer, US Embassy Attache
in Manila, stressed in his video message to the participants that Journalism
plays an important role in all free societies, saying that “Freedom of the press
is one of the basic rights enshrined in the American Constitution and also an
important part of the free society here in the Philippines.”
“Only if people had accurate and thorough
information can one make a free choice in a free society,” he added.
Hoyer further told the participants that
journalists have to be smart, tough, and independent. “These are core features
of what we hope to inspire in students who wants to be a journalist,” he said.
For two days (Jan 18-19), the participants
underwent an intensive training with lectures on the following: Basic News
Writing and Editorial writing with Dave Malcampo, Writing Feature Story with
Imelda Paraja, Basic Photography and Photo Journalism, Citizens Journalism and
Social Media with Rene Carbayas, and Journalism Ethics and Peace Journalism
with Jeff Sampang.
Participants also participated in writing
competitions involving newswriting, feature writing, editorial writing, and
writing incident and reports through SMS (short messaging system).
The seminar was made possible through the
support of the Provincial Government of Sulu, the SACC, DepEd-ARMM in Sulu, and
the Sulu Communicators Network.
The participating schools are: Jolo National
High School, Jolo Agricultural High School-Main, Jolo School of Fisheries, Sulu
National High School, Sulu State College Laboratory High School, Notre Dame
High School-Kasulatan, Notre Dame High School for Girls, MSU Laboratory High
School, and Maimbung National High School. (PIA9)