OHO 2013 Kicks Off

IPS Communication Foundation’s OHO program - acronym for “From Classroom to Newsroom” - has kicked off yesterday with the participation of 24 new journalist candidates from 22 different universities.  

Following participant registrations early in the morning, IPS Communication Foundation Chairwoman Nadire Mater held the first keynote speech of the program.  

We departed from idea of creating a media platform that would give voice to the voiceless in Turkey, Mater said while mentioning briefly on the birth of bianet. 

“Our priority is to move journalism from center to local. Then we started thinking about how we can develop sub-ideas like rights-based journalism, peace journalism and citizen journalism. Both bianet project and its publications are products of these ideas. 

“As bianet, we have limited resources, so we can’t cover every single story. Sometimes we worry about how we are going to manage with the overflow of news. And suddenly we receive several submissions from our contributing writers. Therefore, I can say that bianet is a platform for everyone.

“OHO is taking place at time where we are intensely discussing about journalism. Unfortunately, we have to repeat this phrase every year. But this year, we are experiencing the Gezi Resistance and we have to bring this forth to media discussions in general. In this context, we once more observe how much we need independent media outlets.”

Insights from other speakers

Some of the insights from yesterday’s speakers were as follows: 

Ruşen Çakır (Vatan Newspaper columnist) said the most challenging issue in today’s journalism is media moguls’ inability to adapt on the new media environment due to old conventions. 

Sevda Alankuş (Izmir Economy University Communication Faculty Dean) emphasized that righs-based journalism was built on the responsibility on “others”.  

Elif İnce (Radikal newspaper), Burcu Karakaş (Milliyet Newspaper) and Haluk Kalafat (bianet’s editor-in-chief) gave journalist candidates tips and insights on how to get hired and media is expecting from them. 

Fikret İlkiz (bianet’s legal advisor) briefed on journalists’ basic rights and responsibilities. (CU/HK/BM)

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