 Wednesday
at the Prepcom
Youth journalists polish their skills
New York, June 13, 2001- Young journalists were today
told that they were professionals and their work should
not betray their age.
The advice was given by Iain Guest, one of the editorial and production
coordinators for the On the Record for Children newspaper and leader
of training workshops for under-18 journalists.
On the Record for Children is a daily newspaper produced by the
Advocacy Project on behalf of the Non-Governmental Organization
(NGO) Committee on UNICEF. Each day 1,500 print copies are distributed
at the third Preparatory Committee meeting of the United Nations
General Assembly's Special Session on Children taking place this
week in New York.
The newspaper is also available in electronic format on the web
and via e-mail.
Guest and another coordinator, Ingrid Carlson, give daily briefings
to youth representatives wishing to contribute to the paper. The
group discusses story ideas and learns about being good journalists.
Guest is currently working with the advocacy project on communications
for community-based activists in countries in crisis. As a former
foreign correspondent with The Guardian and the International Herald
Tribune, and as a documentary maker for the BBC with stints at CBC
and Radio Netherlands, he is well qualified to deal with the diverse
group of young people.
Some, like 17-year-old Romanian Vadim-Alexandru Pungulescu and
15-year-old American Nazli Kfoury are experienced youth journalists,
while others are taking their first steps into the media world.
"You must have discipline. That's what deadlines are all
about," says Guest as he assigns an awed pair of youngsters
to a story on the NGO Health and Environment Caucus. They are given
a 3 pm deadline for the piece.
The hands-on workshop format works well as participants get to
deal with the issues and challenges that face journalists everywhere.
The story idea session gives Guest the chance to talk about the
all-important ability to sniff out a story, and best of all, to
get a scoop.
Journalists are people who see stories where others may not, he
explains.
"What happened at that meeting you were at yesterday?"
he asks one participant who replies that nothing significant happened.
"One group did all of the talking and the others complained.
They didn't even agree on anything."
Guest quickly uses the example to show the group that the story
may lie not in the substance of the meeting but in the process.
Was one party dominating the process? Were others not able to be
heard? What were they going to do about the task that they had been
assigned?
There are more than half-a-dozen new stories on Guest's editorial
list by the end of the hour-long session and the young journalists
disperse from the meeting to deal with the challenges of people
who don't want to speak to them, tracking down information and,
of course, remembering to get the facts straight and the names correctly
spelled.
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