RGU’s mass comm dept holds orientation day lecture for new batch

RONO HILLS, 13 Sep: Rajiv Gandhi University’s (RGU) mass communication department on Monday conducted its annual orientation day lecture for its new batch of MA, postgraduate diploma and PhD programme students in the virtual mode.

Renowned journalist and editor-in-chief of EastMojo, Karma Paljor delivered the orientation day lecture titled ‘Journalism needs a fix’. He said that “in today’s scenario, there is a bigger challenge of the journalist being credible in presenting the story. With citizen journalists and digital media enabling everyone to publish stories in social media, the challenge is even more.”

He spoke at length on the need “for journalists to become harder-hitting in their stories, which in turn needs lots of in-depth research and a more analytical approach.”

Paljor also spoke about the “new and exciting world which journalism is experiencing right now” with the introduction of artificial intelligence and virtual reality platforms in the field.

“The world has become more interactive, wherein computer bots and complex algorithms are being used in editorial works. This also brings about lots of opportunities for creating hyper local and hyper niche contents where agile media houses have an advantage, which is always an exciting phase for young entrepreneurs,” he said.

Exhorting the participants to create credible research-backed news reports, Paljor said that “the only way to balance unvalidated reporting on social media platforms is for journalists to report with integrity, and it is only through doing this, such platforms can be countered.”

He also had an interactive Q&A session with the newly admitted students.

Later, faculty members of the department interacted with all the students individually, and discussed their aspirations and expectations from the courses.