malaysiakini organised a 2 days ‘news writing’ class on 14 and 15 aug. at its premise. 14 CJ from different states attended the class. conducted by an ex editor who has over 20 years of experience.
the trainer was good. she presented and talked in a lively manner and was very spontaneous. during the introduction of participants, i realised that i had attended her class before 2 years ago, organised by cahayasuara communications department, a catholic social communication department. (will give the link and the write up of the class i took in 2008 towards the end).
one good thing about the class, is that there were lots of practical lessons, which made the class exciting. it would be dead boring if we just sat down and listened and asked. we get to do exercises individually on paper, with a partner on paper, and individually going up the whiteboard to write. then there were the interview parts too (more about it later).
basically, we were taught on how to do a good, proper, interesting news story that will grab readers’ attention at once.
the ‘5 W and 1 H’ were stressed throughout the whole 2 days class. we were told that whenever we do a story, we must always remember this golden rule – the what, who, where, when, why and how.
some stories were given to us, to let us identified the 5 W and 1 H and then picking up the important points, we were told the re-write the story.
we were also told to come up with a real examples of any news from our communities or anywhere, where we shared to the class, and everybody discussed how to write the story.
well what i remember most that was taught to us was that the opening introduction should tell all – show the 5 W and 1 H. it is the opening introduction that when reader read, they will know what is the whole story going to be about. she then said the following 2 paragraphs are important too, and usually readers who just read these 3 paragraphs will already have an idea what we are writing about, without going through the whole story. this follows the ‘inverted pyramid’ style – all important facts right on top, followed by not so important.
there was a homework for us on day one! we had to go back and re-write a news story given to us. with the tips we learned it was hope that we could come out with a real good story.
on day 2, was started off with something on defamation.
i had learned something about defamation already at a ‘bloggers and the law’ forum organised by exabytes last year. of course the ‘bloggers’ here also encompasses journalists. i have blog about it here, so do read and get some ideas about how the law works for bloggers and journalists.
when someone sue us for defamation, these are the 6 points we can use to declare our innocence:
1. prove it is true. 2. absolute privilege (in court and in parliament) 3. qualified privilege (eg. medical record, bankruptcy) 4. statements made in good faith and believe to be true. 5. fair comments. 6. prove that there is no actual injury to reputation.
the importance of attribution was also stressed. if we used pictures from other websites. this is so that we wont’ get sue for using other people’s pictures. (uh oh. the picture i have up here… 1st picture… forgot the attribution. hold on…. ok got it now. please note the 1st picture was taken from this website. the other 2 were taken by my fellow CJ.
we were also taught how to do headlines that grab attention. some examples of short news were given to us, and we had to come up with the headlines.
ahh… the most interesting (and hilarious!) part was when we had to do an interview with two ‘make-believe scenarios’ (sort of role-play).
one scenario was about a coffee shop owner who was rumoured to run a sleazy massage parlour upstairs his coffee shop. the other was about a staff of malaysiakini caught in a sex video – remember all these were just make-believe. maran from malaysiakini got to play the the one caught in the sex video while arvind, also from malaysiakini got to play the part of the coffee shop owner. so we were divided into 2 groups and we had to approach each of them to interview them to dig out information from them.
it was fun interviewing them as they played their part well – and we being amateurs (ok at least i am), found it hard to dig out info from them! the trainer was going back and forth between the two groups to see how we were doing with the interviews.
after the interviews, the trainer discussed and analysed our interviews. she gave us tips on what we should have asked and where we went wrong.
later, it was on to another interview – but this time it was serious business. interviewing a real person and get her story and write out the story. the person chosen was none other than the lovely indrani kopal, malaysiakini’s video producer. we had to ask her questions in our interview to get information about herself and/or her work. after the interview, we had to sit down and write a news story about her. the trainer went round to check our work and gave us some tips. oh we did our story on hard-copies, which were handed to maran already, so i did not have my work on soft-copy, thus can’t share it here.
all in all, it was an interesting 2 days learning process. as i mentioned in the video to arvind, what i learned most was how to come out with interesting opening line and hopefully, how to make my stories short. i’m usually a long-winded person and my stories are always long! er… i don’t think i have really master this skill yet. hmm… another writing course to attend? 
ok as i mentioned earlier that i had attended this trainer’s class before in 2008 (module 2 of the ‘media skills workshop’). here is the link where i blog about it (but only the last paragraph i mentioned the class). here is the write-up i wrote about it to herald.
NEWS & FEATURES WRITING WORKSHOP BY CAHAYASUARA
7 participants get to learn about news and features writing when they attended a workshop organised by Cahayasuara Communications Centre on 2 August.
The workshop was conducted by Ms X (name withheld for certain reason). She began by explaining the different kind of news and then showed the various sources where news can be obtained. Terminologies of newspaper and newsroom were also explored together with the participants. The Herald and The Star were used as resource materials to refer to.
Participants get to do some exercises when they were told to write a story based on some facts given. The objective of this exercise, was to see how good they were at writing the opening line. The opening line is very important, X said. it should be interesting and attention grabbing so that it will attract readers to continue reading further.
Next, participants get to learn about features writing. The various styles of features writing were discussed, and X prodded the participants on to contribute where and how they can get ideas for features. Some examples of features work from The Guardian were referred to.
In any writing, X stressed to the participants, one must always remember the ‘5 W & 1 H’ – what, when, where, why, who and how. These form the basis for writing of news or stories and are very important to make sure all details were there.
Next session was on sub-editing. The participants had their time full sub editing news and articles from the Herald, under the watchful guidance of X. X reminded the participants to be brief and try to cut out unnecessary words.
The final session, which seemed to be the most interesting was a ‘live interview’. Mr Paul Anthony, a staff from Cahayasuara Centre was interviewed for about half an hour. Enthusiasm can be seen in the participants as they threw many questions at Paul. The participants then had to write a story based on the interview.
The workshop ended with an evaluation and presentation of certificates.
(module 1 of the media skills workshop can be found here)
On Deepavali Day, 17 October 2009, residents of Pearl Hill Townhouse and Solok Tan Jit Seng in Tanjung Bungah, Penang, organised a protest against dangerous hill slopes development, which they labelled as ‘Deepavali Tea Party’, because the protest was followed by a tea reception.
The eLawyer – Exabytes Penang Bloggers & Law Forum 2009 held on 28 june at USM see about 50 people in attendance. 
attended the 
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