The Campus Pers Wartadinus Unit hosted a basic journalism training program for its new members. The program was hosted under the name of ‘Basic Journalism Training.’ It was hosted on October 24 to 26, 2024.
This year, the Basic Journalism Training employed the theme ‘Becoming a Smart Journalist in the Digital Era.’ This specific theme was chosen as a journalist needs to possess filtering, processing, and presenting skills with accuracy, precision, and momentum. The training lasted three days, starting with a seminar in the gallery on the first floor of the H building at Universitas Dian Nuswantoro (Udinus), Semarang.
The seminar featured two expert speakers, particularly in the visual and journalism fields. One of the speakers, Muhamad Hasan Basori, M.A., a visual expert and a lecturer at Udinus, discussed various aspects, including photography, designing, and journalistic videography.
Meanwhile, the second speaker, Anggun Puspitoningrum, S.IP., a Journalist at IDN Times, presented her learning materials concerning digital journalism and writing strategies.
Digital Journalism
The Fourth Industrial Revolution brought the idea of digitalization to life, and it affected the field of Journalism with the emergence of new media or online media. Despite that, online media must also follow the law and be verified by the press council.
“There is a guideline for the cyber media, and we must also abide by the journalistic code of conduct in creating any product concerning journalism,” Anggun uttered.
Furthermore, Anggun stated that when writing in online media, one needs to pay attention to SEO writing. The concept of SEO writing refers to a technique of optimizing the website so the article would appear on search engines.
“Even so, implementing the concept of SEO is essentially like holding a double-bladed knife. This is because SEO only counts from the traffic and clicks on the article, allowing many clickbait articles to be published. For that reason, we need to use SEO ethically by separating SEO writers and proper journalists; by doing so we can still preserve the traditional journalism practice,” she revealed.
Yashfanya, the Head Committee of the Basic Journalism Training, hoped that this training program could educate new members of the Wartadinus Unit so that they could produce creative works. In addition, this program could also serve as a way to improve solidarity among the members.
“Hopefully, through this event, we can push our new members to be creative journalists, with the expertise and ethics of a proper journalist,” she concluded.
The 2024 Basic Journalism Training lasted three days, from October 24 to 26, 2024. After the seminar, the program was continued at Villa Cemara 2 in Kopeng with a series of activities, including learning implementation through assignments, such as reporting and writing news.
After that, new members of the Wartadinus unit for the 2024-2025 period were also inaugurated in a ceremony. The ceremony also marks their beginning as new members of the unit for a period.
