Sumitra Pradhan, Senior Producer and Presenter at Yiga Radio, Thimphu recognized that in a world where technology and journalism are moving forward rapidly hand in hand, it is imperative for journalists to equip themselves with modern skills, especially in multimedia, to retain relevance and make a tangible impact.
I wanted to gain an in-depth understanding of digital media modules, since being a journalist, I needed to use digital media in my everyday work.
The Bodhi Media and Communications Institute, along with the Journalist Association of Bhutan, supported by the UNESCO International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC), launched a project titled "Building Capacities of Bhutanese Journalists in Multimedia News Production". It was a comprehensive six-month multimedia diploma program for furthering and strengthening the professional and modern skills of Bhutanese Journalists.
I felt the topics selected for the program were very strategic and helped me really understand better what was going on in the digital world. I got an opportunity to learn stuff I had never tried before. It was a wonderful learning experience of the concepts and the applications of the digital world. The course was very refreshing- I recollected concepts that I learnt earlier in life and also found new ideas that I am looking forward to implement in the future.
The program was a huge success helping a myriad of journalists usher journalism in Bhutan into the digital age using the curriculum put forward by UNESCO's Model Curriculum for Journalism Education and Manual for Investigative Journalism as its building block. Furthermore, the program saw the Bodhi Media and Communication Institute, the Asian Institute for Journalism, UNESCO, and the Ministry of Labor and Human Resources come together to form a comprehensive diploma program that would allow future and current journalists in Bhutan to procure various new journalistic skills helping them keep pace with the modernizing landscape of journalism.
