The Johor Bahru citizen journalists’ chapter’s new office for Citizen Journalists Malaysia (CJMY) and the Johor Komunitikini portal was officially launched on Saturday in Johor Bahru.
The event, which took place at 10.00 am in Taman Molek, Johor Bahru, was attended by Pandan zone councilor Tan Hong Hua, Malaysiakini CEO Premesh Chandran, Taman Molek Rukun Tetangga chairperson Idris Md. Yusof and members of NGO and residents associations.
This regional office is the first ever official centre for the CJMY programme in Malaysia, and has an administrative facility with a fully
equipped training centre.
According to Premesh, the establishment of the regional office is the first step to democratize news reporting from grass roots level.
“We have come a long way and for the Citizen Journalists in JB to establish this centre is simply remarkable”, said the Malaysiakini CEO.
The Citizen Journalist project was started by Malaysiakini at the end of 2008 with funding from International Centre for Journalists, which is based in Washington, USA.
Through the program, over 200 Citizen Journalists in Malaysia have been trained in various aspects of journalism and video reporting.
Following the success of the first phase of the program which ended in June, 2010, the project has been extended until 2012.
In this second phase of the program, the Citizen Journalists themselves will train the new trainees.
They are also tasked to establish new regional centres which is divided into 5 geographical areas such as southern region (Johor & Melaka), central region one (Selangor, Wilayah Persekutuan, Negeri Sembilan), central region two (Perak), northern region (Penang, Kedah & Perlis), east coast region (Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang) and East Malaysia region (Sabah & Sarawak).
Through this region and the chapters all over the country the CJ’s will be reporting more on community based issues.
All these issues will be published in Komunitikini.com, which categorizes its pages according to major cities which has CJ’s presence.
The southern region coordinator and the launch event chairman, Rajandran Thaiman (left) said that the initiative that they took to report on community issues is a noble effort and the people of Johor Bahru should support them.
“We are not paid to report, yet we do this because we want issues within the community to be highlighted and make Johor Bahru a better place to live in”, said Rajandran.
The Johor Bahru chapter is headed by Steven Chen and has 9 active CJ’s currently.
“We are planning to expand actively and cover more areas in Johor Bahru in next 6 months”, said Steven.
He also said the will more training in the future on various issues.
The whole event is sponsored by well wishers and the local business community.
Watch the video : CJMY JB Chapter and Komunitikini launched | 2:08 by Vijay Kumar Rahman
Jimmy Tan
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