* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Once upon a time in a kingdom far far away lived a beautiful princess...
A story.
We used to listen to them all the time when we were kids, and now we bring them to you, on big screen, radio, paper, internet you name it... Only, today’s (all grown-up) audience is a bit more demanding, and it takes a lot more to hook 'em up than a wicked witch, prince and a princess.
At the end of my first day of a five-day training program on Making Television news with Thomson Reuters Foundation in London, the idea of a story came to me in a whole different perspective. A journalistic one. No more “stories are for kids“ talk, just simple and pure journalism warped in a script, a package of pictures and soundbites. And it was just the beginning.
There are so many ways to tell the audience something new, interesting and exciting, the way you can just play with your words, with pictures, but at the same time be sure not to lose your focus, credibility and objectiveness. Storytelling: challenging, creative, bit demanding, almost artistic but yet very informative.
We definitely were hooked immediately. Fifteen participants taking the course are going to spread the word to different parts of the world: Nigeria, Ukraine, Poland, Venezuela, Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Nigeria, UAE , Romania and Kyrgyzstan.
Our goal is to improve our storytelling skills, and maybe pick up some great pieces of wisdom as we go along. Our course instructors (wisdom careers) are Neil Everton and Kevin Fogarty. Do Google them up, I highly recommend.
So if there was a time before and after Reuters (BR an AR) this would definitely be the beginning of a new era for most of us.
I'm sure we're going to leave the classroom as new and improved journalists with a whole new set of thoughts and ideas in our head and we're also bringing some useful tips for our cameraperson as well!
So hopefully our story will have a happy ending, just like in “they lived happily ever after“ones.
But who knows (and this is just about the right time for that tacky old cliché we all like so much)...only time will tell.
Well, if not time, we definitely will.
