The culture of serial workshop hunters

This week, the 12th edition of the Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC21) takes place virtually. Over 1000 journalists from 117 countries have registered for the conference. Held every two years, GIJC has become the one-stop-shop for networking, refresher courses and just meeting up with colleagues and experts. The conference has become so popular that there is an Asian edition as well.

The first time I attended the GIJC, around six years ago. One thing that I found quite odd was some of the Sri Lankan attendees and their journalism credentials. There were a few, in those early days, who I had never met during my reporting in the island. At GIJC they would pop up like clockwork. 

These guys were masquerading as top-notch reporters from Sri Lanka. The trend has gone down as the GIJC has grown in popularity. That popularity has meant that more and more genuine Sri Lankan journalists and media trainers are now attending the conference. This year I think cohort is probably all genuine applicants, except for one case. 
More importantly, Sri Lankan media expertise is now involved in selecting participants that apply for scholarships to attend the GIJC. When there was no local involvement in the selections, that is when the glossed over CV’s slip through.  

"The GIJC and similar conferences are the best chance for Sri Lankan journalists to gain first hand awareness on global trends and expertise. Despite the boast that we have a media training institute for close to two decades, entry level media training still lags in Sri Lanka"

The GIJC and similar conferences are the best chance for Sri Lankan journalists to gain first hand awareness on global trends and expertise. Despite the boast that we have a media training institute for close to two decades, entry level media training still lags in Sri Lanka. 
There is a reason for this. It is a combination of lack of expertise and training skills. If Sri Lankan media is to be supported by a professionally skilled troop of journalists, we have to look at training them on-shore. For that the trainings have to be planned to match international benchmarks and also delivered by expertise of similar standards. 

We have always had this notion within our media that journalism is a job that you learn on the job. That is not the truth. Journalism is a combination of experience on the job supplemented by skills enhancement through professional programmes. Experience we have more than we would need, expertise and skills, we have very little. 
That same attitude, led to a very Sri Lankan newsroom culture that promoted journalism training as projects pushed ahead by foreign backed non-governmental organisations and overseas opportunities not as options to supplement skills but as jaunts. The former meant there was very little uptake on the part of media houses in trainings. This created a herd of half-baked journalists who were serial workshop hunters. The latter encouraged a lack of application for even trainings that were from the top bracket. 

When I was a junior reporter, I was once dragged into an unenviable situation where another mid-level journalist, but with far more familiar connections with the higher-ups was fighting tooth and nail for a trip to Australia. The trip was organised by local agents of an Australian university, and it was nothing more than PR writing gig. I was not interested. Not so my colleague. 

One early morning I got a call from another colleague, who said that I should go because my name was the one on the top of the list. This was when I found out about that unseen list, where foreign trips were handed over not through merit or applicability but by who was next in line. Once you get you trip, you are moved to the bottom. In this case, this other colleague had been pushed up the list but the organisers of the trip had been tipped off. The trip never came, but the colleague who alerted me, left the paper. The incident was the catalyst for a long running feud between the then editor of the newspaper and the journalist who resigned. The animosity would descend into dark levels in the years to come.  

Things have changed somewhat now. At least there is interest in the community to seek professional skills enhancements, though I am not sure of the same within the industry. I regularly get inquiries from colleagues in Sri Lanka about overseas opportunities, especially those at universities. 
Journalism is not going to be easy. The buzz word is existential threats – from viability to skills to suppression.  
Better skilled we are, safer we will be. 

The writer is a journalism researcher and a writer. He can be contacted on 
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