The recently held training workshop on new media for women development journalists, in Bangalore, had in store some very interesting moments. And at the end of the 8-day workshop, the participants from Sri Lanka, Maldives and India had not only upgraded their Internet-using skills, but also initiated a splendid network sure to help them in their future endeavours.

While most journalists are familiar with the use of the computer and the Internet, very few use web-based skills in their work, which has led to a huge under-utilisation of this powerful technology. From blogging, website creations, mailing lists and discussion groups to the optimum use of search engines and Internet audio and video, the workshop was indeed an eye opener. Besides, there were some great tips on how to gain the best results from search engines, writing for the Web and information on interesting web sites right. In fact, the discussion group activated for the group members has now become a vibrant and informative network channel of communication.

There were, of course, some slogging sessions where the participants got some hands-on experience of what they were lectured on, which proved to be quite exciting. Budikote, an obscure village in Karnataka's Kolar district, was an ideal place to try our hands at all we had learnt. A village of nearly 3,000, Budikote is where Namma Dhwani, India's first private cable radio network, operates. After a hard day's work of video shooting, sound recording and note taking, we began a challenging day of digitalising our inputs. Though developing the content was not quite a Herculean task for most of us (being print journalists), digitalising the sound bytes and video pictures were! But of course, the end result, our very own comprehensive website on the successful community radio project at Budikote was worth all the effort.

Though pleased with the training on how best to use the new medium, many women journalists expressed their inability to pursue it simply because of the
inaccessibility to a good computer and Internet connection. Though most of the journalists from India were familiar with the web-related concepts and had
fairly good access to Internet, many others raised concern over the lack of such facilities in remote towns and villages and also in places like the
Northeast. Also, friends from Sri Lanka expressed their inability to access the Internet in public places like Internet cafes due to security concerns in their
country. Poor office resources also deprived many journalists from using computers, they said. Nevertheless, all the participants went back with the
promise to spread the word about the immense possibilities of web journalism among their colleagues.

Organised by Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) and One World South Asia (OWSA) the workshop held was the second in a series of workshops meant for women journalists in South Asia.

— Elisa Patnaik

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