Local Journalists In Kars Region Meet In A Workshop

The journalists from Kars, Kağızman, Iğdır and Sarıkamış, places from the northeastern Turkey, met at the “Journalism Workshop” organized by the IPS Communications Foundation and the Press Now in Sarıkamış district of the Kars province this weekend.

The workshops was held at Çamkar Hotel in Sarıkamış and lasted for two days. During this time, the journalists had discussions with Assistant Proffessor Esra Arsan on “journalism”, with Robert Slagt on “media and ethic” and with Yücel Tunca on “media photography.” They also talked about how the local media could be made stronger.

Meeting in simultaneous sessions that were held in four-person groups, the journalists, on the one hand, exchanged opinions about news writing techniques, media and ethic, media photography and, on the other hand, talked about their problems and searched for solutions.

The workshop began with the speeches of bianet coordinator Ertuğrul Kürkçü, Press Now representative Ruken Barış and Honorary President of Kars Journalists Association Salih Şahin. In addition to the writing techniques, Ass. Prof. Arsan explained the methods for the objective, just, correct, balanced and democratic journalism.

Stating that journalism is a profession that communicates, Arsan emphasized, in the workshop she conducted over the news examples from the local newspapers, that it was necessary to develop the news resources and use them more efficiently, while pointing out to the need to develop the journalism for the issues of women and children.

Drawing attention to the points about which journalists needed to be careful while preparing their news in his presentation, Slagt shared his views on the important points of journalism that were important in getting to the point.

While discussing what was missing in the two news  pieces that were made by the participants in the last six months, the points they liked about the news item they had made, and how the news could be enriched, Slagt also emphasized that the local journalists needed to be braver in the area of the freedom of expression.

Having declared “reporter’s eye and good equipment can improve the quality”, Tunca showed how important it was to have a photograph in a news article in his presentation about examples from the history of photography since 1840.

Drawing attention to the “man with a mustache representation” in the photographs in the local newspapers, Tunca shared his opinions on the important points of taking and using pictures.

Talking at the evaluation session held after the workshops, the local journalists repeated how productive the education they received was and how useful these workshops would be to the local journalists and the newspapers published in the region.

The local journalists received their certificates at the end of the workshop that lasted for two days.

The names of the journalists who participated at the workshops are: 

From Sarıkamış, Şeyma Kalkan and Mehmet Ali Cengiz (Sarıkamış News), from Iğdır, Aydın Deniz and Hurşit Deniz (Iğdır Radio & TV, newspaper Hudut/Border), from Kars Hilal Tanrıverdi (newspaper Denge/Balance), Salih Şahin (newspaper Öçek/Scale), Adem Alp and Yener Tekbaş (Serhat TV), Tacettin Durmuş (regional representative for NTV and Show TV, newspapers Siyasal Birikim/Political Accumulation, Doğu Haber/East News and Ölçek/Scale), Hüseyin Demirci (regional representative for Anadolu Ajansı/Anatolia Agency and the Turkih Radio and Television) and Ali İhsan Alınak (Politikars.com), from kağızman, Cafer Bilen and Emrullah Bilen (newspaper Kağızman’ın Sesi/Kağızman’s Voice), Lemin Gülderen and Sait Küçük (newspaper Kağızman Gözlem/Kağızman Observation) (BÇ/EZÖ/TB)