Aga Khan University to help improve editors’ skills
By Nancy Agutu
The Kenya Editors’ Guild has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications for Continuous Professional Development (CPD) for editors.
The partnership will enable cooperation in research and establishing a professional development programme for editors’ continuous learning.
“We’d like to see CPD take a blended learning approach,” KEG President Churchill Otieno said during the signing ceremony at the Graduate school in Parklands, Nairobi.
“KEG sees journalism as a profession, and no profession thrives without standards. Our core standard is the code of conduct. We must use the CPD to allow members to improve their skills set.”
Mr. Otieno said KEG’s role drives the need to keep learning.
” We must keep acquiring new knowledge, because only then shall we make an impact and be relevant to our audiences,” he said.
Media Owners Association Chairman Stephen Gitagama said the media in Kenya was going through a greatly important phase in its development.
“The world has shown that no economy grows without research and innovation, and that these happen quicker and sustainably in an environment where universities are helping solve real industry problems,” he said.
“The product of a good university should not be a certificate, but solutions to society’s problems. It follows therefore that the partnership being signed should work to help us find solutions to challenges in the media.”
Dr Lawrence Pintak, the Aga Khan University School of Media and Graduate Studies dean, while pledging to rally support for the programme, noted that the partnership would help in dealing with issues such as fighting disinformation.
“The idea of creating standards for journalists, to ensure they are working for the basic level, that’s an important thing,” he said.
Mr Alex Awiti, the AKU VICE Provost East Africa, said the programme can make a tremendous contribution to bolster and enhance capacity of Media leaders, especially when innovation becomes the second name of journalists.
“We have to be serious as a society to move Journalism to the same rank as other professions,” he said.
