#LiveConnection September 4th, 2022

        

 

 Journalism is the job consisting in searching the reality for explaining it to you. Our goal is you have good information to take better decisions. That’s the theory.

 

It’s true that many times, commercial interests made the journalism to turn a merchandise instead of a service. Inclusive, journalists use to forget the show-business is an issue to cover, not a state to be into. That depends on two crucial aspects. First, we as journalists have to stand strong and defend our real purpose in the society. Second, the public has to understand the facts are more important than the gossip or the rumors. Both depends on education.

 

That’s why, this week, my colleague and best friend Jorge Luis Otero started in Talara City,here in Piura Department, a project with high-school students. It’s a Journalism worshop. What he wants to reach is the students to improve their communication skills. That means speaking good, writing good, explaining good.

 

I learned about that project because Jorge Luis asked me for sending the students a greeting on video. The idea looked me like very good, but I realize the teenagers love surprises. So, I told Jorge Luis to do a little drill in exchange.

 

I performed a little newscast in the same way I webcast my newscasts in Spanish to my broad audience. But this one should be only addressed to that classroom. And we did it so.

 

By using a Zoom connection, I performed a newscast as usual that ended ina little motivational speech. After that experience, Jorge Luis called me to thank, and to tell me that the drill wondered the students because it gave them a first approach about how we manage the news in oder to spread them to the people.

 

Not only with journalism, but I think it would be great if the professions and jobs look for ways to get close the school or high-school students. Why? Because we eestimulate vocations.

Many ttimes, teenagers don’t know what to do about their lives, or maybe they are following a flow or the pressure of their parents. But what do they want to do and to be?

We, who are working in what we love, may be the conduits to teach those teenagers. Obviously, we need teachers who understand how to make that match.

 

The school in actual times must not be encloistered into its walls – it has to expand to the community, and the community has to be open to serve as mentors. This topic has many things to talk, but let’s start up on that idea. Is your school or high-school asking for that kind of connection? Are you able to take that chance and entering the classrooms? Let’s talk about.

  

Producing contents

If you’re thinking to communicate something, you should consider those steps.

 

In 2012, I was invited to give a workshop about contents production at a school in Tambograndé, Peru, because they had the chance to launch a local diffusion TV show. The problem I found was that the project… had no project, and even a methodology assuring a positive impact.

 

Although you work on non-commercial contents, it has no sense building them so far the needs of people. So, it must be important to know appreciating both perspectives –transmitter, receiver—to be successful.

 

Planning our feature

When contents addressed to the public are planned, two points of view must be conciliated – what the transmitter entity wants to say, and what the public wants to receive. The first one implies to work on our feature’s design. We must imagine how we’d like it looked like and were recognized because it makes no sense to create something for having it hidden, but for it to be shown and generate a point of view in the persons who receive it.

 

The design implies to consider quality criteria, what means which ones will be the insights that will make our feature as original, functional, and aesthetic.

• The originality implies the new which it is introduced even if we combine known elements – it’s what makes it unique.
• The functionality is the logic allowing it can be understandable and useful for the life of people.
• The aesthetics are all the insights that make it nice to the senses.

 

Those three components must be work in a combined way. As much as this design’s details are more specific, it will be better the way it can be managed, adapt, and introduced to the public. But, is everyone called to receive our feature?

 

Surveying the market

The first question you must ask when a feature is planned for the big audience is which target of that is the right to receive what we have created. If the answer is “for everyone”, it shows unexpertise and ignorance of the audience we are addressing to. So, it will be a feature that ends to dislike everyone.

 

Although the ideal is creating features that can reach the most people as possible, the true is that will be a target of that what will accept better, what will make it as own, aand even it will invest (time, money, effort, etc) on it. That’s why it’s important to conduct a market survey, what means a research that allow us to know in detail the characteristics of the persons who potentially could receive our feature, so we identify which portion or segment of these persons will accept it better and under which conditions.

 

The best suggestion in this point is beginning to specialize in a specific target which a kind, everlasting relationship to be grown. If the survey proves that other segments could be interested in our feature, they can be going to add progressively but respecting their insights. Inclusive, features that fit to the interests of that other targets could be created

 

The market surveys are mutable, what means they can give us new results as the interests of the people to change. That depends much on the ideosyncracy of the public, the space and the time they occupy, and the existent current events. So, it’s recommendable they renew as soon as changes in this variable to be detected inside the target we are usually working a feature with.

 

Conciliating perspectives

The key for a successful feature is the format originality, the style, and the contents, combined to the satisfaction of the real expectations the public has. Then, it’s when the purpose must be defined – the goal we want to reach when we launch or hold a determined feature.

 

This purpose must be verifiable in quantity as well as quality, and it must have in constant review to see if it’s realistic or it needs to fit. The constant market survey will allow us to make the necessary adjustments or changes for this binomy to keep powered.

 

If some of those procedures is made without the right rigor, or if it is simply dismissed, it can’t be guaranteed the production effort to be successful. Thus, it’s not about to have and to develop the idea, but to make the necessary steps to know if it will have impact. This first effort will save many headaches.

 

© 2012 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. The photographs featured on this entry are one mine, another Franco Alburqueque’s, and the final one taken from a Facebook video. The model in the first photo is Carlos Talledo. Talk to me on my Twitter aand Facebook accounts.