Supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Tajikistan and country universities, 21 journalism tutors took part in an intensive training conducted on August 20-25. The training resulted in a production of the new media program to be used in universities.
The trainings was organized by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in Central Asia with the financial support of the Government of the United Kingdom within the framework of the project on development of new media and digital journalism in Central Asia. The training in Dushanbe followed the previous work on improving the capacity of the journalism tutors in the region. One week prior to it, similar training for the tutors from Kazakhstan’s universities finished in Almaty, which, in its turn, followed training in Bishkek organized for journalism tutors from Kyrgyzstan.
21 tutors from 5 universities of the Republic of Tajikistan took part in the training. The participants represented the universities from the capital of Tajikistan, as well as universities from 3 other regions of the country.
Throughout 6 days of training, the participants studied the whole spectrum of new trends in global media domain. The participants learned about the preferences in content types of the contemporary audience, discussed the importance and peculiarities of building a personal brand for journalists, considered the storytelling technique in modern content. The training featured the practical exercises for visualization of participants’ stories. Special attention was devoted to important for Central Asian journalism aspects, such as medialiteracy, conflict- and gender-sensitivity of the produced content.
Well-acclaimed specialists in the field of new media both from Tajikistan and abroad presented their topics during the training.
Lenur Yunusov, editor of the Russian edition of American magazine Inc.Russia started the training actively involving participants into discussion of the new approaches to producing media content corresponding to the needs of modern audiences. Lenur Yunusov told participants that the information is consumed differently these days: the content consumers use screens of five devices and spend no more than 8 seconds to decide whether to continue paying attention to a media material. The participants listened to Lenur Yunusov’s presentation with great interest.
Aisana Ashim, the director of The Village Kazakhstan, presented the participants with an idea that each journalist has to seek creation of his/her own unique personal brand that will open up new horizons and opportunities. Having conducted a diagnosis of participants’ personal brands, Aisana Ashim provided participants with advice on better positioning of their brands.
Trainers from Tajikistan Parviz Mullojanov, Margarita Khegai and Rustam Gulov provided participants with an information about why conflict- and gener-sensitivity are important in creation of the modern content and why facts should be checked and rechecked. The participants took part in interactive group exercises doing which they reinforced the obtained knowledge.
Trainers Anastasiya Lotareva, editor-in-chief of the Russian portal takiedela.ru, and Aizada Toktogulova, trainer on visual storytelling, told participants about how to tell stories and how to tell stories visually. The storytelling training by Anastasiya Lotareva was well received by the participants: many asked to prolong the training to listen to more stories and learn to tell their stories better. During the visual storytelling session by Aizada Toktogulova, the participants created their own visual stories using smartphones and PCs.
Anastasiya Lotareva, editor-in-chief of the Russian portal takiedela.ru:
“I doubted the format of 8-hour-long training: this is difficult first of all for the people attending the training, not for the media trainer. The attendees in Dushanbe made me happy with their full involvement; I became convinced this is in fact a good format [of the training]. Particularly, I was glad with the part, when the attendees – first shy and then increasingly involved – came up with their own topics and refused to have a break, as it was important to them to share stories they created.
The difficulty all tutors of journalism faculties have is the lack of the practical skills and experience of working in field. I was amazed that they have deep understanding of everything and learn with a great commitment”.
Jamolov Ilhom, senior tutor of Khujand State University named after academic Bobojon Gafurov, chairman of the regional Sughd organization of the Union of Journalists of Tajikistan:
“Everything was great at the training, however, most of all, I liked the trainings “Monetization in new media” and “Storytelling”. I think these sessions have not only theoretical and methodological importance for me as a university tutor, but also practical importance. I want to practice storytelling, and learned a lot about it during the training from our trainers. I was amused by their presentations. I learned a lot from a leading expert on storytelling Anastasiya Lotareva and young, but competent journalist Aizada Toktogulova. I got to know about many tools for storytelling, including the website constructor Tilda. Using tilda.cc service during the training, I created a website about the training. The trainers helped me in everything, in particular in using the Tilda tool “typewriter”. Overall, the training was very useful. I rate it 5 stars”.
Kameliya Samoilenko, tutor at the faculty of domestic and international journalism of the Russian-Tajik (Slavonic) University:
“The training was very informative and useful. Each module helped us to deepen our knowledge of our profession, learn new and interesting for us and our students things. The knowledge we received correspond to the modern media market requirements, it will help us to upbring marketable specialists”.
During the training, the participants created their own final team products – presentations of the new trends in journalism. These presentations will later be demonstrated to the students during the university lectures.
IWPR Central Asia launched the project in April 2019 to strengthen the capacity of the tutors of journalism faculties and their students, beginning journalists, future bloggers and opinion leaders to produce high-quality unbiased gender- and conflict-sensitive content
The training featured a presentation of the free educational online-platform of CABAR.asia MediaSchool, which will provide users with educational modules on new media, content creation, personal branding, video-storytelling, podcasting and digital security.
“This project is implemented by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) with the financial support of the Government of the United Kingdom. The opinions expressed during project activities and/or in project publications do not reflect the official positions of the Government of the United Kingdom and IWPR”