LAGOS SEPTEMBER 22ND (URHOBOTODAY)-Sixteen journalists from the print and electronic media in Delta State, are currently undergoing a one week training at the world renowned Thomson Reuters Institute in London under the sponsorship of Delta State Government.
The programme which has as theme “Investigative Journalism, Effective Reporting and Writing” will be conducted by Mel Cheary and Andrew Gray, of the institute and will focus on ethics and principles of investigation in news writing.
According to the programme schedule, the course will enable participants to identify, select and investigate political, social, economic, business and environmental news and help them to attract readers to complex stories, and to deliver on high degree of accuracy in reporting.
The team comprises journalists from THISDAY newspaper, Guardian, Vanguard, NTA, Delta Broadcasting Service (DBS) AIT and Channels Television, as well as officers of the state Ministry of Information among others.
The Commissioner for Information and leader of the team, Mr. Chike Ogeah , while speaking on the programme said the training is the second to be sponsored by the Delta State Government, as 12 journalist participated at the Thomson Reuter Institute for one-week training on news writing.
Ogeah said training is in line with Governor Emmnauel Uduaghan’s agenda of building human capacity in all spheres of endeavours , adding that, journalists, as the watch dog of the society and vanguard of the protection of democratic values, need to sharpen their skills to meet the challenges of news writing in an increasing global village.
The chairman of Nigeria Union of Journalists, Delta State Council, Mr. Norbert Chiazor, who is in the team, expressed gratitude to Uduaghan for his magnanimity in the spornsorship of journalist in the state to the Reuter training, adding that Uduaghan has been of tremendous support to Delta NUJ.
He also expressed confidence that the training would impact positively on Nigerian journalism given the status of Reuters as a global news leader, saying with the support of the state government, more journalists would be exposed to such overseas training and urged those who could not make to the London training to be patient .