Team Herald
MARGAO: Youngsters who started as journalists in Konkani daily Sunaprant have gone on to become successful journalists on national television and absence of a daily in Roman Konkani has resulted in a dearth of journalists in that script were opinions expressed at Konkani Journalism Day celebration at Ravindra Bhavan, Margao.
Delivering the key note address on Youth in Konkani Journalism Anwesha Singbal said Sunaprant, the Konkani daily in Devnagiri script, had become a factory for journalists as most who learnt journalism there have been quite successful in other languages.
“Ashwini Priolkar is well known on national television and Sneha Naik has also earned much fame as a journalist and both of them had learnt journalism in Sunaprant,” she said while admitting that even she learnt journalism through the same publication.
She said “Campus” page that was brought out weekly introduced many youngsters who were still in college to journalism and later on they took that up as a career, but lamented that the journalism courses conducted at present give false hopes to the students and that is why not many of them take up journalism.
She said the internet and social media has a lot of youngsters showing their journalism and pointed out that the younger generation is not interested in reading the news today when it was already uploaded yesterday on the social media.
She said it was important to promote a good newspaper rather than promoting the language or script in which it is published and suggested that publications should have one page in the other script to unify all Konkani readers.
She said if Konkani journalism is to be made popular amongst the youth, then the youth will have to be impressed on what they will get from it and how they will benefit from it. “The youth today are looking for places where there is more scope for them,” she said.
Jasmine Rodrigues pointed out that reports published in Roman Konkani publications do not have any impact as the writings lack seriousness or deep study and further said the hard work involved in journalism is not very attractive to the younger generation.
She also pointed out that the present generation is not fond of reading and that there is a total dearth of guides or mentors to youngsters venturing into journalism and pointed out that Roman Konkani journalists are aged around 50 years or are senior citizens who have crossed 70 years and that was frightening as it was prophesying the end of journalism in Roman Konkani.
Julio D’Silva said the absence of a daily in Roman script has reduced journalism in that script to minimal. He said that writing essays or articles is considered to be journalism and blamed organizations giving awards to essay or article writers as good journalists for furthering the wrong impression.
He said there was a need for Roman Konkani journalism to change with the times where news is sought in brief and suggested that social media could be a good option for journalism in Roman Konkani and said WhatsApp could be an apt medium for it.
He said it was time for publications in Roman Konkani to cater to the needs of the readers rather than pandering to the whims and fancies of the writers.
A brochure mentioning the works of renowned journalists S F Wizard, Dr Simon C Fernandes, Lambert Mascarenhas, Laxmidas Borkar and Prabhakar Tendulkar was released on the occasion.
