Searching for nectar to make sweet honey

Today is the last day of the training and participants are working on one bigger investigative story, either on gas projects in Mtwara, or about challenges to the freedom of the press in Tanzania. So they should be searching for information from the web, planning and structuring well their draft stories, and finally writing their articles and publishing in their blogs.

While the journalists are working on their research assignments, I have a chance to put together a summary of their feedback postings about what we did on the second day of the training, that is, Tuesday.

To get a full picture of the programme on Day 2, I recommend the posting by Sylvia Mwehozi, Radio Mlimani. She is also explaining step by step how she planned her research assignment and the final story on the Zambian football team’s match against Brazil. Even for a short story, she says she was using many references to find background info on both teams and facts such as the venue and the kick-off time of the match itself.

Here’s another draft summary of the day by Imma Mbuguni, editor of Majira. He also did his story on the football match and says that in order to do that he had to plan how he divided his time on researching, writing and finally posting his story to his blog.

Seif Jigge, Orkonerei Radio Service, or shortly ORS FM, says that during the first days of the training, he has gained a good understanding on how he should prepare himself before starting to investigate his story. “First of all, I will think about what I need in my story,” he writes and concludes by saying that even while searching for information from the web it might be useful to make notes in the notebook, rather than copying passages from other people’s articles.

Here’s another list by Joyce Shebe, Clouds FM, about what she learned on the second day of the training.

Marc Nkwame says that he has learnt that “it is possible to come up with new and fresh-sounding stories from materials gathered around previously written pieces the way bees gather nectar to make sweet-tasting honey”. He also says that he would develop the story he wrote about the free wireless internet access in Kigali into a full feature story to be published in Daily News in a few weeks.

Two more points from Hilda Mhagama, also from Daily News. First of all she quotes me suggesting that for an investigative story, you could end up spending 80 per cent of the time on the research and less time on the actual writing. Her second point is about sharing knowledge, one very important aspect of the training. “Change is not change until you change,” she writes, “so I will be the one to change first before imparting this knowledge to my colleagues at work.”