By: Albert Ouma
Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. Most of institutions starting from Technical colleges to Universities have been offering journalism as a course and many people have enrolled to different level of this course.
Most of Universities do offer this course from certificate up to doctorate level. While at Bachelor’s level we find that there are a lot that is being taught theory part being the largest part of the course. Many of the students always wait until they reach at their final year in order to start visiting studios in order to put what they have learnt in class into practice.
During this time we find that it’s late for someone to practice and gain more skills since most of our Universities and colleges do not have enough equipment to be able to cater for all journalism students.
You find in one institution there is only five professional cameras yet there are about two hundred students in a class. This situation makes it not easy to do practical at that level.
The best solution to this problem Is for these students to start finding a way to start doing practical earlier instead of waiting until that time when it will be late.
For those who may want to specialize on print media it’s high time that they should start writing letters to different Mainstream Newspapers for publication this will help them to gain more experience and skills on different writing skills.
To those who may want to major on broadcast it’s also right time they may start their different channels either on YouTube or Facebook since so that they may use these platforms to start practicing their skills.
As media students it’s high time we wakeup let’s not be so much concentrated on theory part of the course instead let’s embark on finding a way how to start putting what have learnt In class into practice .
Let’s not wait until it’s late.
Albert Ouma is a Media student at Rongo Universitiy
Elizabeth Angira