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Latwell Nyangu
LOCAL media organisations have been urged to make use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the quality of news stories.
To cover the gap, WAN-IFRA Women in News is carrying out capacity-building training among journalists in different media organisations to adapt to the technological tools.
WAN-INFRA Global Advisory and Insights director Susan Makore, said, they empower organisations with training for them to make maximum use of new technologies to boost their audiences.
“As WAN-IFRA, from the advisory side, we have seen that it is important to assist media organisations with capacity building around the area of digital transformation.
“Post-Covid, a lot of media houses struggled to gain their footing with the decline of readership, circulation, viewership and listenership.
“Media organisations have had to relook at how they do their business.
“One key element has been retooling, focusing on digital transformation and our interventions around the discussions around on how AI can assist, especially the traditional media, to play catch up with those that started online.
“We use best practices so that the media is financially healthy and this is why we bring these conversations with media organisations,” she said.
Makore added:
“Some have seen it as a threat but it helps media organisations to be more efficient.
“AI can’t replace the reporter who can go into the field but it can help to package the story.
“It is recommended for the newsroom.
“We concentrate on the leadership accelerations programme where we offer support to female journalists to hone their leadership skills.
“The idea is that we have seen in our newsrooms, across Africa, there are very few women in leadership positions, at a level they are movers, shakers and drivers of the stories in newsrooms.”
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter