adminHarare Bureau
The World Association of Newspaper and News Publishers will today launch its mentoring programme for senior media women in Malawi and Zimbabwe.The programme to be held in Harare will see more than 30 senior female journalists from the two countries being trained in comprehensive media skills development, career coaching and general media development.
Spokesperson for WAN-IFRA, Norah Spie said the programme was meant to capacitate senior media women in view of global media trends that are now advocating for better coverage of women’s issues, in a bid to increase readership.
The training is also aimed at assisting newspapers and their high potential female employees to overcome the gender gap in management and senior editorial positions.
“Studies show that a higher representation of women in decision-making positions in media leads not only to better coverage of women in the news but also to better financial results.
“Financially and editorially solid media stand a bigger chance of being strong voices in their communities: promoting good governance, transparency and fighting corruption, once women’s voices are amplified,” she said.
More than 60 media professionals from 30 media companies from Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe will participate in the mentoring and networking programme that will run for a year.
WAN-IFRA will also launch the Alliance for Women in News, a working committee that partners with media houses to collectively help widen the opportunities for management and executive roles for their women employees through education, training and awareness raising.
WAN goes beyond traditional approaches to media development by incorporating professional development techniques from the corporate world such as career coaching, facilitated networking and peer mentoring into a robust and highly effective capacity building curriculum.
WAN-IFRA, based in Paris, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, with subsidiaries in Singapore and India, is the global organisation of the world’s newspapers and news publishers.
It represents more than 18,000 publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120 countries.
Its core mission is to defend and promote press freedom, quality journalism and editorial integrity and the development of prosperous businesses.
Online Reporter