Last Friday, on 31st October, members of IIUM FM and non-members had the opportunity to participate in a News Writing & News Presenting Workshop held at the HSC Faculty Lounge. The workshop started at 9:30 AM and ended at 1:00 PM, just in time for Friday Prayer. The guest invited was Mr. Arief Subhan Arman, a former TV3 news anchor and a columnist for News Straits Times. Through this, the students could get the chance to learn about news directly from someone with real-life experience in journalism.
To jumpstart the event, Mr. Arief gave a brief introduction on his education and how he got involved in working with such big news companies. After that, he asked every participant to do takruf by introducing themselves, sharing their names, hometowns, hobbies, and their dreams regarding their future career.
After the quick icebreaker, Mr. Arief started off by asking everyone about the difference between hard and soft news, followed by explaining to us the nine types of journalism (political, business, sports, investigative, lifestyle, crime, international, entertainment, science and technology) and what type of work we would be going into if we were to choose to pursue that specific journalism field. Mr. Arief also had the opportunity to share with us some personal book recommendations, which included two books by the author Dinar Mata: What It Means to Be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood and The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication. He then told us stories of his work experiences for companies such as Astro.
After that it was time for an activity focused on news channels and journalism, followed by a breathing exercise session meant to reduce anxiety and stress.
The second half of the workshop started after a 15-minute break for everyone. It started by everyone forming a circle then playing a game and did breathing exercises which can help to reduce anxiety in a person. After that, Mr Arief had prepared news reports in English and everyone in the room had to read it aloud and pretend that they were a news reporter while trying their best to use the correct tone, intonations, pronunciations and facial expressions. Mr. Arief gave valuable advice about how we must pronounce each word clearly and correctly and that the way we use our tone and our facial expression when reading news is also important. Ater that a Malay script was available for students to practice with.
The workshop ended with a photography session and an interview session with Mr. Arief asking him specifically about career paths and advice when pursuing a career in journalism. Overall, it was a great opportunity for students to learn and polish their skills to apply in the FM station and for future careers. The crew members hope to be able to apply the knowledge given, so stay tuned for news presented at IIUM FM which van be viewed at Tiktok and Instagram.
By Hafiz Shahrol
