Creating New Age Communicators

By Shiv Shankar Das

Mass communication worldwide is progressing at a dizzying speed. The state of the art communications hardware, evolving information technology and the internet have completely changed the rules of the game. The communication revolution is upon us, with the potential of enabling us to close the information gap with more advanced societies, reducing disparities within our country and generating major social change.

India’s mediascape indicates that mass media in the world’s second most populous country is truly unique. Unlike, in the developed countries of the West, in India, all mass media –print, television, radio, cinema and the internet –have been growing simultaneously and are expected to continue to grow in the foreseeable future. The media industry in India is growing in leaps and bounds. According to FICCI-KPMG report (2016), Indian media and entertainment is set to reach Rs 2,260 billion by 2020. India will outpace overall growth in entertainment and media spending both across Asia-Pacific and globally through 2018(PwC 2016).

Media training is at the crossroads as innovations in digital technology and the explosion of social media have created new jobs and changed the way journalists work. Journalism students need to know core concepts well, but more importantly, they need to realise the importance of digital media and emerging technologies. Students need to be tech-savvy and build on their skills to take advantage of new technologies.

Media is on a tremendous growth track and journalists are in big demand. Social media provides an amazing tool for these journalists as they can interact with people in real-time and get inputs almost instantaneously. Journalists need to create content and deliver it in real time. Be it news, lifestyle, current affairs or travel, it is a fact that the capacity to quickly capture, collate, edit and distribute information is significantly altering the style of reporting and programming globally. The industry is demanding more formally trained people to create content in the digital world.

It becomes evident why it is imperative to look at the relevance of journalism education in the country today and whether it meets the needs of the new scenario.

Justice G.N. RAY, former Chairman, Press Council of India has suggested that a curriculum in journalism education should include the foundations of journalism, which are designed to promote prerequisite intellectual and craft skills. These foundations include:

• An ability to think critically, incorporating skill in comprehension, analysis, synthesis and evaluation of unfamiliar material, and a basic understanding of evidence and research methods.
• An ability to write clearly and coherently using narrative, descriptive, and analytical
• methods.
• A knowledge of national and international political, economic, cultural, religious, and
• social institutions.
• A knowledge of current affairs and issues, and a general knowledge of history and geography.

Today journalism training means familiarisation with journalism practice in print, TV, radio and internet. In this era of convergence the aim is at creating multi-skilled journalists. Apart from generic media needs with regard to various fields across industry, in terms of online journalism, audio-video production, corporate communication, development communication, advertising and film studies should also be dealt within the curriculum. The focus should not only be technical training but also be sensitization about the process of communication and its relevance to social change. Therefore cardinal values like Truth, fairness and objectivity in reporting are what that should be imbibed in each student.

About the Author:

Prof. Shiv Shankar Das is pursuing his PhD from Utkal University. He is working as assistant professor and course coordinator for P.G. Dept. of Journalism and Mass Communication at Birla Global Institute, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.