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Reporting mantra 'zoom in, zoom out' was the main takeaway in Ghana.
Ghana Chief Correspondent Matthew Mpoke Bigg’s reporting mantra “zoom in, zoom out” was the main takeaway for the dozen print, web, radio and television reporters who attended the Thomson Reuters General Reporting course in Accra in April.
In a week of discussions and exercises in a room adjoining the city’s main internet cafe, the group tested Matt’s idea on everything from ethics to elections - and learned a simple new way of looking at the fascinating range of stories that make up their diaries.
Participants ranged from a bubbly news anchor on one of the country’s main television channels to a brave media entrepreneur self-publishing an eight-page weekly newspaper in the country’s second city, Kumasi, with a co-investor and one editorial assistant.
Used as we were to the resources of major agencies and titles, it was a shock to learn how little most Ghanaian reporters get in support or salaries and how hard they work to tell the myriad stories they cover with nothing more than public transport and a basic smartphone.
Salaries, we learned, are as low as GBP250 a month for a senior reporter – usually without a laptop or access to a company car even for out-of-town jobs. Employment can be precarious, often without a written contract.
One lively session tackled – but did not, of course, resolve – the challenge of “soli”, the entrenched practice of paying reporters to attend news conferences. In a country where reporters mostly cannot hope to own a car in their lifetimes, the envelope with anything from one to 20 pounds handed out as they leave has become a crucial contribution to survival.
But the passion that makes journalism in many African countries lively and provocative was universal in the group gathered from across the country. Many of the stories they brought as examples of the work of which they are most proud were of the kind that changed lives, like one expose about a neglected rural school that was quickly upgraded as a result of the publicity.
Another, which we used to practice Matt’s method of zooming in on the details of lives and methods and zooming out to reveal the broader social and economic context, was about the young men who make a dangerous living arbitraging the fuel price differential between Ghana and neighbouring Ivory Coast by ferrying 20 litre cans across the border on motorcylces.
Apart from sharpening their reporting skills, the group fanned out to tell their stories with new ideas about how to tell a good story as well as new friends and contacts for their professional network.
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