Professor Clement Dzidonu (Left) signing an MoU with Dr Bernard Otabil (right) after the lecture
The Accra Institute of Technology (AiT) and the Ghana News Agency (GNA) have challenged Ghanaian journalists to embrace new technologies including the internet in the production and dissemination of news in the country.
According to the bodies, journalism in the 21st century cannot survive without professional newsmen making ample use of modern information and communication devices.
‘The future of journalism lies in the embracing of new technologies to affect a transformational change to the profession in order to prevent a collateral damage,’ noted the President of AiT, Professor Clement Dzidonu, in a presentation at a public lecture organised by AiT and GNA on Monday in Accra under the theme: ‘The Age of Technological Convergence: Opportunities and Threats to Media Organisations and Journalists’.
The lecture was the first in the series to be organised by the two institutions.
He stated that the role of journalists and their audience have changed considerably in recent time due to global technological advancement, and that, he said, calls for journalists to strive to acquire technical skills to be able to keep up with their readers.
‘The print media and electronic media houses should aggressively acquire technological skills,’ he charged.
‘It is a do or die time for journalism. It is either journalists embrace new technology and survive or ignore them and die,’ Prof Dzidonu emphasized.
According to him, the survival of journalism has always been subjected to the willingness of its practitioners to adopt and adapt to changes in the technological world.
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Ghana News Agency, Dr Bernard Otabil, also in a presentation noted that newspapers need to be sensitive to the desires of their readers in order to remain in business.
He urged media houses to institute training programmes for their reporters in the area of technical skills acquisition in order to boost their performance on the job.
The two institutions signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to continually work together in organising such lectures and to establish a journalism centre.
BY Melvin Tarlue
(Email: [email protected])
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