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Press Release

A three-day workshop on Media Skills and Training was organised by the Sandesha Foundation for Culture and Education in association with Signis India from July 25 to 27, 2022. Thirty-three Participants from all over Karnataka participated in the workshop at Sandesha, Mangalore and learnt the basic skills of Journalism and different writing genres of Journalistic writing.

Participants were apprised with the nitty-gritty of making a newspaper, fundamentals of Journalism, News-writing skills, different genres of writing such as Article, Column, Opinion, Features, Film Review, Book Review, Drama Review, Creative Writing, Editorial, Diary, Memoirs, Script. They learnt about the do’s and don’ts of Social Media Management and drafting press releases etc.

The classroom sessions included brainstorming sessions intermingled with practical sessions, where the participants gave ideas, sought feedback and practised teamwork and got into the shoes of a journalist. The last day of the workshop saw the culmination of their learning as the groups compiled their reports, created their own personal blogs and designed their newspaper with appropriate photographs, headlines, blurbs and mastheads. Prizes were also given to the best news report, best article, best memoir and best blog.

Rev. Fr. Victor Vijay Lobo, Secretary and Treasurer, Signis India speaking at the inaugural session as the Keynote speaker quoting Pope Francis exhorted the participants saying that Listening is the first indispensable ingredient of good communication practises. In order to provide solid, balanced and complete information, he added it is necessary to listen for a long time.

Rev. Fr. Sudeep Paul, Director of Sandesha, Mr. Srinivasan Nandagopal, Mr. Chidambaram Baikampady were the resources persons for the workshop.

Fr. Sudeep Paul delivered inputs and enlightened the participants on Fundamentals of Journalism, gave details on news writing skills, skills for writing articles, column, editorial, features, film review, book review, drama review, memoirs, diary writing etc.

Mr. Nandagopal elaborated on skills for drafting press release, newsletter preparation, opinion writing, script writing and creative writing. He gave inputs on social media management.

Mr. Chidambaram Baikampady shared his rich experience of working as a journalist for over fourty years and suggested practical tips on dealing with journalists.

Mr. Roy Castelino, PRO of Mangalore Diocese and Trustee of Sandesha speaking at the Valedictory function exhorted the participants to practise ethical journalism. He also requested the participants to be not mere reporters of events that take place but practise real journalism by bringing out real issues and problems, which are detrimental to the society.

Sharing his experience at the workshop, Fr. Ronald Veigas of Shimoga said, “We got an in-depth understanding of different genres of journalistic writing. The workshop with its practical and theoretical inputs have given an insight on the fundamentals of Journalism. Anson Nazareth from Udupi opined that the workshop was extremely helpful for him as it was an eyeopener about different kinds of writing and it provided him the needed structure or format on different genres.