Michelle Loubon

Dou­glas Wil­son, Guardian Me­dia Group gen­er­al man­ag­er (Print), says jour­nal­ism is sto­ry­telling with a pur­pose. He made this com­ment at the bmo­bile and Guardian gieN­et­work Mag­a­zine launch of Young Jour­nal­ists Pro­gramme 2010, at Grande Riv­iere Room, Mar­i­ott Ho­tel, Mu­cu­rapo, yes­ter­day. Al­so present were Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed's Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Gabriel Faria and Lennox Tou­s­saint, Com­pa­ny Sec­re­tary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion. The launch was de­signed to tar­get in­terns and thank those in­clud­ing 2009 Press Pass win­ner Paige An­drews who con­tin­ues to con­tribute to the GIE mag­a­zine.

Wil­son said: "It should do more than gath­er an au­di­ence or cat­a­logue the im­por­tant. For its own sur­vival, it must bal­ance what read­ers know they want with what they can­not an­tic­i­pate, but need. In short, it must strive to make the sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est­ing and rel­e­vant." He added: "A cu­ri­ous mind and a broad lib­er­al arts ed­u­ca­tion are by far the best qual­i­fi­ca­tions for a ca­reer in jour­nal­ism. Read every­thing you can, in­clud­ing clas­sics in fic­tion, that can help you be­gin to un­der­stand hu­man na­ture and the hu­man con­di­tion. "De­vel­op a habit of crit­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing the work of oth­er jour­nal­ists and find mod­els for your own work."

Some of these ker­nels of wis­dom were drawn from Bill Ko­vach, Se­nior Coun­selor of the Project for Ex­cel­lence in Jour­nal­ism. Wil­son re­mind­ed bud­ding jour­nal­ists about the tenets of jour­nal­ism in­clud­ing truth, loy­al­ty to the cit­i­zen­ry, ver­i­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion and main­tain­ing in­de­pen­dence from those they in­ter­view. Jour­nal­ists are re­quired to mon­i­tor pow­er­ful per­son­al­i­ties and in­sti­tu­tions, keep the news com­pre­hen­sive while ex­er­cis­ing their per­son­al con­sciences.

In de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Anil Roberts, Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, paid ku­dos to Guardian and Sports Ed­i­tor Valenti­no Singh for their con­tri­bu­tion to his me­dia ca­reer. "It was (Guardian's Sports Ed­i­tor) Valenti­no Singh who in­vit­ed me to write a col­umn when I was coach­ing (swim­mer) George Bovell III. I went on to write sev­en ar­ti­cles in which I gave an analy­sis of Tarou­ba Sport­ing Com­plex." Roberts urged the prospec­tive jour­nal­ists to em­brace the "awe­some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty" to work in a pres­ti­gious pub­li­ca­tion. He of­fered words of ad­vice in­clud­ing: "Don't pla­gia­rise. Don't shirk your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties."

In­vest­ment in Youth

Lisa Agard, Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Mo­bile Ser­vices and Vice Pres­i­dent Le­gal at Bmo­bile said it was im­por­tant to in­vest in youth. "In or­der for us not to be left be­hind as a so­ci­ety and as a peo­ple we have to be pre­pared. One way of en­sur­ing this, is by in­vest­ing in our youth. We con­tin­ue to work to de­vel­op cre­ative ways to pro­vide young peo­ple with ever ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op them­selves and de­vel­op the nec­es­sary skills and most of all to be­come hap­py, whole­some in­di­vid­u­als and lead­ers of to­mor­row," said Agard.

She said the thrust to­ward Press Pass en­abled jour­nal­ists to use new me­dia to re­search and re­port more com­pre­hen­sive­ly on is­sues and to po­ten­tial­ly reach a glob­al au­di­ence. "Build­ing on the part­ner­ship de­vel­oped with the Trinidad Guardian last year, we saw Press Pass was a worth­while and unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to help young peo­ple de­vel­op a skill they will use through­out their lives," added Agard. Camille Sa­landy, TSTT Head of Pub­lic Re­la­tions and Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, Trudy de Ver­teuil, TSTT Man­ag­er Cor­po­rate and Com­mu­ni­ty Af­fairs and Gra­ham Suite, Head of Hu­man Re­sources, were al­so present.

About gieN­et­work

Since 1994, Guardian has had Schools' Projects, brand­ed Guardian In Ed­u­ca­tion. The pub­li­ca­tion pro­vides a fo­rum for ex­change, de­bate among stu­dents across schools and in their own en­vi­ron­ment. It builds a tal­ent pool for the fu­ture and al­lows the writ­ers among the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion to show their writ­ing skills. Re­flect­ing on the past year, Agard said: "We now see writ­ing as a way to in­sti­gate change. By writ­ing, we can use our tal­ents to make a dif­fer­ence, not on­ly in our schools, but in the com­mu­ni­ties and coun­try." She thanked for­mer co-or­di­na­tor Melv­ina Haz­ard and Bav­ina Sookdeo for their con­tri­bu­tion.

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