Thomson Foundation extols quality of Promasidor Quill Awards winners

The 2015 winner of Promasidor Quill Awards, Taiwo Alimi, just completed the Summer Convergence Course run by the London-based global news agency, Thomson Foundation. Before the end of the Course, Andrew Enahoro, Head, Legal and Public Relations, Promasidor Nigeria Limited; paid a visit to the Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation, Nigel Baker; and Director of Operations, Hosam El Nagar in their office in London.

What inspired Thomson Foundation to go international?
It actually has to do with the founder of Thomson Foundation who was a media man and had a successful media empire. He then decided to expand from Newspaper to TV primarily. He decided throughout the world that everybody should have the opportunity to get a fair share of the news and also to support the business processes of the Kingdom.

We have worked over the last 52 years and we have worked in over 100 countries. We are working in 25 countries a year. The mandate is to work internationally. We have worked on a number of large projects funded by governments; one of them is retraining 150 media men in Khartoum, Sudan. The project is funded by the Foreign Office. We don’t seek to make profits, though we seek to cover our cost.

We work on programmes with other foundations, with media organisations; but we also run programmes for individuals but that is limited because of funding. We have rich experience. One of the things we target now is that we are actually looking at digital initiative to train because a lot of journalists in Africa especially do not have opportunities to be trained.

Looking at that project, we talk to a lot of organisations for likely support from media organisations in Africa. We believe this will bring rapid development to the continent.

Every year, Quill Awards overall winner comes for the Summer Convergence Course. How did you arrive at the content of the course?

Of course, we get feedback from individuals but I can say it is partly feedback and partly based on the industry knowledge. What we have is a general sort of introductory preview.

As you see, a lot of issues like using mobile technology to play video, you need some technical, social, editorial skills to understand. That extends to different kinds of devices used in multi-media reports. It is a full-time job requiring different techniques of using mobile technologies. It is really providing the skills with maximum ability to create attractive content for media organisations.

Journalists want to get information about media stream on their desktops. Now, they don’t need to do that. What they need is just understand the programme as well as the graphics. A lot of these phenomena started in the U.S and they are landing here.

We have had two Promasidor Quill Awards winners trained by the Foundation. What is your impression of them?

Arthur Kunle was here. I think personally it will be unfair of me to give the detailed critique of Taiwo because we have had conversations but I have not been involved in his training. What I can say is they are competent journalists.

They are intelligent journalists; they have given a good account of themselves. In the last two years, the journalists that we have brought on board have been highly motivated. We have no problem with people. Interestingly, we hope to run a competition in conjunction with representatives of foreign press association in London. We sponsor one, which is the best journalist from the developing world and this year we have got 150 entries from across the globe.

About Taiwo, he came from pure print and he is very passionate about work. He has come a long way. This was reflected in the story that won him the award: Where the Blind Dare to Dream. He did a great work. He has got the natural talent and he does not mess around.

What challenges have you experienced vis-a-vis participation of foreign journalists in this programme and how have our winners overcome those challenges?

This is a very good question. Nigeria has traditional journalism and has tendencies to look to the UK for training. I think the issue about Nigerian journalism is the lack of formal training. Nowadays, I think the difference is that there are not much of role models at the senior level; rather they move to PR firms.

That is a challenge in helping people sometimes where their skill level is. Again, journalists might have to be partial in treating issues because there are suppressions probably because they have not been paid.

Competition is a huge driver for journalists in many African countries and in the Indian sub-continent. It builds some confidence and keeps motivating. Again, journalists have to discover themselves and be adaptable to their environment. You have to break the assumptions you have about things you take for granted. Here, we try to take people from where they are to where they want to go. We do this through one-on-one or two-on-two journalism training.