Future Journalists Programme

Sthembiso Sithole
@SITHOLEEXPESS

Bright Future for Journalism Students

Sphelele Ngobane and Julia Payle in the newsroom.

Future Journalists Programme (FJP) is a great platform for us journalism students from different universities to share ideas about the media landscape in Africa. Yesterday we learned about podcasting. Today we will be in the streets of Grahamstown doing vox pops.

Future Journalists Programme (FJP) is a highway African initiative which is funded by a grant from the Open Society Foundation. FJP was launched towards the end of 2007.

The programme is targeted mostly at second year journalism students in tertiary institutions across the country.

Its aim is to inspire young journalists through providing opportunities for them to experience the media industry and the opportunities available to them. FJP was created around five key pillars, which are to: Provide a vibrant networking opportunity for journalism students at SA tertiary institutions to engage with one another, meet media professionals and cover key events, or conferences.

Provide mentors in the media field for the students. Provide training and learning that will equip the students with media production skills, through experiential learning projects and workshops in areas such as new media writing;editing;photojournalism. Provide exposure for the students to media professionals and to developments in the media world.

Natasha Phiri a second year journalism student from Tshwane University of Technology believes podcasting is the new way to tell those untold stories.
“I learned a lot about podcasting. I believe this is a way to tell community stories.”