Day 1: Hongkong International Multimedia Journalism Workshop

Whats it to be a student all over again twenty years later?

In a sense we are always students. But to be a student in a multimedia workshop and going out to get an audio story yourself and then editing it into a small succinct radio story using Soundtrack Pro on a Mac workstation, and all in one single day, rather six hours: from learning to producing and critiquing the stories of all participants.

That’s exactly the story of my day one in the International Multimedia Journalism Workshop in Hongkong Baptist University organized by the Knight Frank Centre of International Media of the Miami University School of Communication.

And to have sessions in a multimedia studio with 30 Power Mac workstations, each with FCP and Soundtrack Pro, is a fun by itself, unknown in the Indian context indeed. Cannot boast anymore to be technologically challenged.

Doing it with MSNBC.com chief producer, Washington Post Head of New Media, several academicians of the Miami University, and Universities of China, Hongkong, India, Thailand, Malaysia, et al is another big time fun.

And, lo and behold, the researchers and PG multimedia journalism students of the host University helping all of us in getting this organized, even teaching us the tools of editing et al! Good fun to be a student again.

Don’t know why the kids back home fret and complain so much about it! Much better than signing papers, ordering people and being forced to judge people, and between people, or between options all of which look attractive!

The story I did on the streets for radio was on how Hongkong youth who have gone to other nations compare the life and attitudes and social involvement of the youth in their country with those of other nations around.

Day two shall be on electronic media and am looking forward to that with my background of television journalism.

The five days workshop makes everyone a participant and a speaker, and is aiming to create a scenario for futuristic multimedia convergence based journalism where a news consumer will simultaneously consume content in the interactive, text, video and audio formats seamlessly moving from one to the other in one go.

Neither practiced, nor even thought of in the Indian context so far. Sameer Jains, Aroon Puries and Subhas Chandras of the world may jolly give me an audience after this if they want to make the next big buck in news media.