The Secret Behind Internet Training for Modern Journalists

In 2006, MISA Tanzania Chapter and representative from VIKES (Finnish Foundation for Communication, Media and Development) Peik Johansson deliberated to establish internet training for Tanzania journalists’ project. The project was designed to impart internet skills to Tanzania journalists to use internet effectively to accomplish the most important four key areas for modern journalism - news monitoring, communication, research and publication.

The project funded by Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already supported a series of training workshops in Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar and Mwanza regions. More than 100 journalists have already benefited from the series of such trainings since the inception of the project in 2008. Some of the trained journalists have imparted the skills to other staff in there respective media houses and students from various journalism training institutions. So the trainings have multiplier effect for the journalism profession in Tanzania.

The ongoing internet training workshop for northern zone journalists that I am currently participating is one of the series of trainings under MISA and VIKES project.

The training that started on Monday, November 15, 2010 at the University of Dar es Salaam Computing Centre, Summit Complex in Arusha brings together 20 journalists from Tanga, Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Manyara for five days.

This is a very interesting training especially for me. I have been using internet for more than 10 years to search information, communicate with others, to read news from various local, regional and international websites and even for publication, but frankly speaking, I have not yet utilized this modern tool efficiently as a communicator and journalist.

I don’t have my own blog, for instance, and I have never used the internet to do such important activities for journalists such as using map to find direction, internet banking and online booking for train, bus and even airlines. But this training has started to offer all for me. Thank you MISA and VIKES for coming up with an idea, design and execution of this important project.