News management in class

Times of India: New Delhi: Monday, 20 April 2015.

Times School of Journalism (TSJ), run by The Times of India (TOI) group, is going to adopt a news management system for training students from the 2015-16 academic year. The news management and integrated layout software, using the CCI 3.5 platform, is the same as that being used by TOI, Economic Times and various Mirror editions, published by Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited (BCCL).

"We will be functioning like a full-fledged newspaper," says Devlin Roy, DGM (corporate group) and principal, TSJ, which conducts a full-time postgraduate diploma course in journalism. The move is meant to strengthen facilities for handson training. "We are also planning to start our e-zine in association with the timesofindia.com team," adds Roy.

Focusing on all media platforms, the institute boasts a core faculty comprising senior editors from the TOI group as well as other leading media brands; two labs with computers and internet connections; a projector for film screenings, a studio for broadcast training and other resources. Students are offered training in Quark and other page-making soft ware. They carry out fieldwork and bring out house journals.

"Everybody who files stories has to design pages as well," says Roy.

According to him, the institute prefers an assignment-based curriculum to a textbook-based approach. "For example, if there is a building collapse in the vicinity, our students will go and cover the accident. They will file the story in real time, just like the reporters in newspapers TV channels websites. The teachers will give their feedback on the stories and, while doing so, introduce important concepts in reporting like sourcing of a story or how to interview people, etc," he elaborates. "Similarly, in a session on, say RTI, the teacher will actually ask the students to file RTI applications and write stories based on the response."

Shweta Krishnan, a 2012 alumnus, stresses the importance of field training for budding journalists. "The stories we used to do would be published under the Times News Network," says Krishnan, who interned in two newspapers and a magazine before moving into public relations. Moreover, she adds, being taught by working professionals is different because they could "talk to us about what they do and how it's done. They could share what they did the day before. So, the information is not redundant."