A week long Story Development Bootcamp organized by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) for selected journalists across the Northern part of Ghana has taken place in Tamale. The training started on Monday 14th February, 2022 and ended on Friday 18th February, 2022.
The aim of the training was to equip participating journalists with skills of serving their communities with critical journalism needs in and around those localities.
Under the training, journalists were taken through video story production for television audience which can as well serve radio listeners too.
Facilitators were drawn across Ghana and included Justice Baidoo of the Multimedia Group Accra, Kwesi Emmanuel Debrah also of the Multimedia Group Kumasi, Mr. Zakaria Tanko, a lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) and Jonas Nyabor of Citi FM.
Specific areas and topics covered included: Story Ideas, Planning and Development, Mobile Journalism (mojo), Audience Engagement, Core Principles of Journalism, Right to Information (RTI) Law and approach to seeking for information under the RTI and Data Journalism.
Speaking at the training, a Program Associate at the Media Foundation for West Africa, Frederick Quayson said the training is important because it will assist journalists to sharpen their story development skills.
“Journalism plays an important role now in development in our democracy, so it is important that we improve on the capacity of journalists so that they can do ‘critical journalism’ which should push for change and development, so that is the reason why we are doing this bootcamp”, he stated.
“It is not the first but it is the first time we are doing it in Tamale, we are having other workshops or trainings in other regions too, we are doing it in Accra, we are doing it in Kumasi too. That is the main purpose for this bootcamp.”
For his part, facilitator Justice Baidoo said he was happy to be in Tamale to work with the selected journalists during the training.
“I find that a lot of us do a lot of stories but the way we tell the stories, it doesn’t really get the sort of impact that we want people to have from our stories. You can only have your story impact people when people enjoy the story, people are able to find reason to watch, listen or read your story.” He added.
“More than half of my career stories have been from here in Northern Ghana and I feel that there are a lot of stories that need to be told to the rest of the country and beyond. Part of the reasons why there is very little development in this part of the country is that I feel there are many things that are ongoing here that are not properly told to the rest of the country and so people are not even aware of the living conditions in parts of Northern Ghana,” he concluded.
