By Ozumi Abdul
Stallion Times with the support of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) and the MacArthur Foundation on Saturday 40 journalists from various media organizations in Kano on investigative journalism.
The training which was under the “Get Involved, Dialogue, and Improve (G-DRIP) Project”, has the objective of building the capacities of participants with key skills and techniques used in investigative reporting, to empower journalists on how to write good pitches for investigative reports, and to demonstrate to participants how to gather data and present evidence(s) in investigative reports.
While speaking, the Editor-in-Chief of Stallion Times, Isiyaku Ahmed, who also doubles as the Coordinator of G-DRIP, stated that the three years project is targeted at improving media literacy and promoting good governance and accountability.
He said that the purpose of the workshop was to train journalists on investigative journalism, while also lamenting its declining nature, particularly in the north.
Ahmed observed that journalists in the region are now more inclined to do event and press release stories, rather than in-depth and investigative reports.
“The purpose of this workshop is to teach participants key skills and techniques in investigative reports, to have more investigative reports; we have noticed that over the years investigative journalism is fast declining.
“People do not do investigative reporting or in-depth stories. So we are doing this training to give participants the required skills, strategies, and understanding they need to be successful as investigative journalists, such as how to write investigative stories, present data, and shreds of evidence for an air-tight investigative report.”
He added that journalists are also taught how to write good pitches that they can use to access grants, and as well to get support from their organizations to write investigative stories.
On the feedback from the participants in the past year, the Stallion Times Boss said the project has had a considerable number of investigative reports that were written by journalists in Kano, adding that he is also looking to see more of such reports this year.
The lead facilitator during the training workshop, Idris Muhammad said his teaching module will enrich journalists with the skills required to excel in investigative journalism.
Muhammed said he noticed that journalists are no longer interested in unraveling stories that are not popular in the public domain, which he attributed to poor research and investigation skills.
He said these obvious deficiencies among journalists imperatively call for rigorous investigative journalism training, as well as data-driven journalism.
He commanded Stallion Times for giving the participants the avenue to learn as well as support them to write investigative reports.
