The Chairman of NUJ FCT Council, Comrade Grace Ike on Monday reiterated the Council’s commitment towards empowering Media Practitioners in the Nations Capital through continuous learning, innovation, and exposure to global best practices.
Comrade Ike made the commitment while declaring open one-day capacity training organized by the Council in collaboration with Lifestyle Hues and Adobe Team which was attended by Abuja-based 100 Journalists drawn across public and private media Organisations.
She said: “I believe this training is one of many steps we are taking to ensure that our members remain competitive, relevant, and impactful have evolved and the way we present information must also adapt. This is why trainings like these are not just necessary but essential.
“The ability to design compelling visuals, edit multimedia content, and present stories in engaging formats is now a core part of our profession. Tools like Adobe Express, they are critical instruments for effective communication in digital age.
“The NUJ FCT will remain committed to building the capacity of our members through continuous learning, innovation, and exposure to global best practices. I believe this training is one of many steps we are taking to ensure that our members remain competitive, relevant, and impactful,” she noted.
While thanking managements of Lifestyle Hues and Adobe Express Team for the partnership and willingness to share their expertise, she urged all the Participants to take full advantage of this opportunity by being attentive, ask questions and most importantly, be ready to apply the knowledge gained here in our respective newsrooms and platforms.
In her presentation, the Training Facilitator, Mrs. Ayodotun Akinfenwa of Lifestyle Hues explained that the training was part of the support for her contemporaries in the media community.
She said: “Journalists as much as everybody else, need to understand how to create designs, announcements, how to create presentations and content in the line of their work. And tools like this help them to be independent, enhance their productivity as journalists and news people.
“So for me, doing sessions like this, I love to empower people. I love to give back to my community. So in conjunction with the Adobe Team, I came out here to do this. They were very happy that I’m doing this for my country. Just talking to the Team, they were very supportive. And I’m happy to be here to do this, to support my esteemed Journalists.”
Mrs. Akinfenwa, a seasoned Brand Marketing Consultant and an Adobe Partner and Ambassador explained that the Adobe Express tools when put to use will be boost productivity level of Journalists, content creators who always creating on social media, business owners, among others .
“Journalists need them. And there’s a few, you’ll see some news-related things here today. And some of them should be useful for your own personal endeavors as well, because if you are not online, if you are not showing up online, it’s almost as if you are not doing anything.
“One thing I noticed is that people that are not putting out their content, they are not showing up online, they would not get as much opportunity. Sometimes they have more experience, and they have more knowledge, but because they are not showing up, a lot of times, they don’t get the opportunities that they need,” Mrs. Akinfenwa noted.
While highlighting the importance of the training to practicing Journalists, Mrs. Akinfenwa said: “There’s so much information that needs to be passed out, you know, in order to, so that people can be better citizens. They can go about their business well.
“So things like this will facilitate communication. They will make it very easy for the news people, the Journalists, the writers, to churn out content quickly so that people can easily digest easily. And then things can go, the economy, society, things can go on smoothly because information dissemination is way faster and more effective.
To this end, she urged management of both Public and Private Sectors of Media Owners in Nigeria on the need to “invest in their journalists. The Journalists are huge influencers, culturally, societally, economically, they are huge influencers and so they must be at the cutting edge of tools, communication tools, AI tools. And dissemination tools for publishing, creation and publishing.
“They need to be at the cutting edge. Because at the end of the day, even their media outlets will enjoy and will be set apart because of the way their journalists are, you know, going about it. So they need to re-train and expose their Journalists, their Presenters, their Reporters, their Crew to tools like this.
“I think it’s very key for the publishers of, you know, at media outlets to invest, not only in free or paid trainings, to keep their people at the cutting edge of dissemination,” she stressed.
Participants described the exercise as a welcome development and pray for more training and retraining of members