By:Emmanuel Ukumba
The Directorate of Social Communications of the Catholic Diocese of Lafia last Friday staged a One-day Training/Workshop for all the crew of the Diocesan Newspaper, the Catholic Voice, members of CAMPAN, as well as Parish Reporters and Corespondents, on news gathering and ecclesiastical reporting.
The training which took place at St. William’s Cathedral Lafia, focused on the theme, “Basics of Journalism: Essential Tools for News Gathering and Ecclesiastical Reporting,” and drew participants from CAMPAN, Parish Reporters, as well as Editorial Board members of the Catholic Voice Newspaper.
In a welcome address, the Ag. Director of Social Communications of Lafia, Rev. Fr. Godwin Apesuu, harped on the essence of the workshop, noting that it was to bringย personnel in the Diocese together to acquaint them with the basic rudiments of news gathering in journalism.
The clergyman added that the second essence of the training was for the media practitioners to know those terminologies proper for use in reporting the Church.
According to him, “every institution has its jargons. Since the Church too is a very organized and recognized institution, there are certain numenclature that are proper to the Church which as Catholics, we ought to know and use.”
“We need more hands to be on deck so that we will be able to reach every part of the diocese because we have about 58 institutions in the diocese. So it is very difficult to be in one place and know what is happening in all these places.”
The Ag, Director therefore, told the participants that what they were going to learn during the workshop was to help them take news from their parishes and give to the Catholic Voice Newspaper, insisting that the Diocese has to tell its own story, otherwise people will tell it wrongly for the Diocese.
He maintained: “Things are happening in your parishes and they are not known, they are not written. That’s why we invited you so that you become our eyes in your parishes. If elections, baptisms, burials are done in your parishes, give us the report.”
One of the Resource Persons,ย Mr Lubem Tiav, a seasoned Journalist and Director of Presentations at Radio Benue, Makurdi,ย highlighted the 5 Ws and H of news writing (the Where, When, Why, Who, Whatย and the How), as necessary steps in writing news. Mr Lubem explained in simple terms with visual and graphic descriptions, the technicalities in gathering news, identifying, physical presence, telephone calls, press releases, official declarations amongst others.
“News is not something to be imagined, it is rather a report of what has happened,” he concluded.
High point of the one-day training exercise for the media practitioners was presentations of papers on News Gathering and Ecclesiastical Reporting by Mr. Lubem Tiav and Rev. Fr. Godwin Apesuu.