DLONG to bridge lacuna in media industry with practical training

The media has come under intense scrutiny with analysts, politicians, and even journalists accusing it of bias and sensationalism even as it has failed the people in its coverage. This is as critics across the political spectrum have also said that fake news and cyberattacks played a big role in determining the course of events.

However, the prevailing logic has an “if only.” If only the media had been less swayed by shocking stories, if only bias in the media had been purged, and if only fake news had been eliminated and cyberattacks curtailed, the outcome would have been different.

According to an in-depth study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1999, 23 percent of the public find factual errors in the news stories of their daily paper at least once a week while more than a third of the public, 35 per cent, see spelling or grammar mistakes in their newspaper more than once a week.

To this end, DLONG Media, created two years ago to utilise multimedia tools to influence and restructure socioeconomic, national, and professional development, has said it is ready to tackle the lacuna in the media.

According to the MD, DLONG Media, Dayo Longe, the plan was to create a first-class facility where businesses, as well as individuals, could come for end-to-end media solutions.

In his words, “there have been sleepless nights, strategy and ideation sessions that have gone on for long hours. They have all brought us here.”

DLONG Media has developed compelling and interesting projects. Amongst these are The Learner’s Cut, The Being Teen show, Night Crawlers, and The DACAT show. In collaboration with top-notch talents, DLONG now has industry-standard projects in its portfolio.

Longe said: “I’ve been in the media for a while; I studied Printing Technology and Marketing specialization in advertising and it was when I was in advertising that I gathered so much experience. I saw a lot of lacuna from the school and the industry. So, I prayed to God for the wisdom to start a media firm and also a school that will be producing people that will fill the gap in the media industry in general.

“Schools these days no longer operate at the same level as during our time. “We were trained to do a lot of things to fill the gaps in the industry, but a lot of our graduates today are not industry inclined. You have to train and retrain them severally. Graduating from school is not enough without knowing what to do but. This is why this school’s curriculum is 30 per cent theory and 70 practical. So, it is not only the young ones that will learn here but also practitioners because those in the industry also need training, which our centre is available for.”

Speaking also, Creative Director and General Manager, DLONG, Busola Olugbemileke, also known as Bukola Olu-Filmist, said, “we are going to be bringing cutting edge content, something unusual. Basically, we are a content creation company and we are going to be producing content that will fill the void existing in this nation either personal or things that affect everyone.

“There has been absence of different kinds of spice to the making of contents, a lot of content is being created without trying to understand the need for it, trying to understand what people truly crave for. So, we are and will only create content after researching on their importance.”