Internet Training for Editors

My Name is Hamisi Kibari, currently working with the Government owned company, Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN) as Sub Editor for a Kiswahili daily, HabariLeo.

Before joining HabariLeo, I was an editor of Kulikoni, a Kiswahili weekly,  produced by Media Solutions Limited (MSL) which is one of the IPP’s companies. And before that I was sub editor for another Kiswahili daily, Nipashe also owned by IPP.

On Monday, this week, I started attending training on Internet issues. The training is being conducted by Media Institute of Southern Africa, Tanzania Chapter (MISA-TAN) in collaboration with Finnish Foundation for Media and Development (VIKES).

In my daily assignments internet is one of the essential tool as I depend on it for facts cross-checking and writing backgrounds, apart from reading emails and stories from social media or international news agencies.

With this five day long training I expect that I will add some knowledge on the effective use of the internet to better my daily activities in the newsroom. As my invitation letter reads, I expect that the training will equip me with more skills on fact-finding, news monitoring, communications and publications.

On the first day, February 11, 2013 (Monday), the training was so impressive as I started learning some skills that will enable me to use the internet faster and more effectively than I used to do. Some of the things I learnt include how to make a certain website my home page and how I can make lists of favorite pages/articles. 

From the training I also discovered many tings that have changed the society, things like how I can buy airline tickets through internet, make use of Wikipedia (encyclopaedia) to find facts including editing passages whenever I find it necessary,  using it as global shopping (eBay, Amazon), playing games and internet as a social media (where one can listen music, chatting through Facebook or twitter and meeting new and old friends).

The training was so impressive to me that I found no problem and I expect to learn more as the training enters the next day.