The Media Council of Malawi (MCM) has urged local and national news organizations to professionalize coverage of the art and culture industry in Malawi. This was emphasized at the end of a two-day training on arts and culture reporting on 11 November 2022 at Riverside Hotel in Lilongwe. The training has benefitted twenty participants from various media houses across the country.
Media Council of Malawi Board Chairperson, Wisdom Chimgwede urged the participants to be exceptional reporters of arts and culture to promote the same in society.
“We believe in building capacities of media practitioners and this training is one of them. For a long time, arts and culture reporting has been neglected in our newsrooms and we thought we should come in with initiatives that will improve coverage and reporting of various arts that need a spotlight,” he said.
MCM Board Chairperson Wisdom Chimgwede explaining the need to take arts and culture reporting seriously
The Board Chairperson applauded the European Union in Malawi for financially supporting the training saying there will be diverse reporting of arts and culture.
He said MCM takes this training as the beginning of many other pieces of training in the future, and the council will keep monitoring the reportage of art and culture so that the intended purpose is achieved.
Zuleika Nanguwo, one of the participants from Zodiak Broadcasting Station said the workshop has allowed her to think in more detail about what arts and culture reporting really consists of, and the different aspects of arts that need coverage.
“I never knew art is this broad, this training has widened my knowledge on the different categories of arts and how to report about it. From this training, society should expect more specialized coverage of the arts.” She said.
On his part, the EU Ambassador to Malawi, Rune Skinnebach dared the journalists who participated in the training to cast the net wide in arts, not just focusing on music and poet reporting.
“You are the people who report those stories about arts and culture. It is equally important that after this brief training, you succeed to encourage the youth and introduce them to the love of arts. The youth will not just be our future poets, sculptors, filmmakers, and musicians, but they will also be defining which world we are going to live in,” he said
The council organized this training after noting that the art industry is under-reported hence the need to build the skills and capacity and ignite the passion of emerging journalists, reporters, and creative editors to incorporate arts coverage and other aspects of the arts.
