Chennai: There’s good news for those who want to be
journalists. They need not go to brick and mortar
journalism institutes
but can acquire basic reporting and editing skills from India’s first Online School of
Journalism.
The journalism school, which is part of the media portal Online Centre for Media Studies (OCMS), can be accessed at www.ocms.in. It has been set up by Sunil Saxena, a veteran journalist with wide experience in print, Internet journalism and journalism education.
OCMS uses Moodle, a hi-tech online classroom developed by an Australian open source company, to run its courses. The online classroom, which has been customized to OCMS needs, is packed with interactive features that make online learning a pleasure.
According to Sunil Saxena, the OCMS Dean, “Moodle makes it possible for OCMS faculty to provide lessons both in text and audio formats, and conduct practical work online.”
“This is not all,” says Saxena. “All classrooms have in built message rooms and discussion forums that allow students to interact with faculty members on a one-to-one and one-to-many basis.” Interaction is also encouraged by asking students to use Skype during course work. The software also allows students to set up their own blogs within the classroom.
“Grades earned by the students are maintained online, so that a student is aware, at all points, as to his or her progress, ” says Saxena, who has a unique background in journalism.
During his 30 years in the profession, Saxena has held several important positions in print. Among the newspapers and magazines that he has worked for are The Times of India, The New Indian Express, India Today, Business India Group and The Pioneer. Besides this, he was the first Dean of the Asian College of Journalism that was set up by the B.D.Goenka Foundation in Bangalore in 1994, and taught at the Times School of Journalism in Delhi. He has set up 12 websites in five languages for The New Indian Express Group, and is the author of two books – Breaking News and Headline Writing.
He says that the biggest advantage of the online course is that it can be joined at any point of time. “There are no entrance tests, and no start and end dates. Any graduate, who is good in English language, is fired by the desire to become a Print or Internet journalist, and has an Internet connection can join OCMS,” Saxena informs
Each course is of 12 weeks duration, and the beginners can chose any one of the following basic courses: Print Journalism, News Reporting, News Editing and Internet Journalism. “These coursers are also useful for entry-level
journalists as they are conducted by experienced journalists,” says Saxena. Besides this, OCMS runs two advanced courses targeted at junior and middle-level journalists.
A novel feature of OCMS is Make your own course. “This feature offers great flexibility to entry-level journalists looking for on the job training students. They can select those news modules where they need training,” says Saxena.
Besides journalists, OCMS courses are also targeted at technical editors working in IT companies and public relations officers who want to hone their editing skills.
“This is a pure skill-based programme. The students, among other things, will be taught how to write news leads, structure and edit news reports, write headlines, understand dummying and page lay-out, rewrite copies, etc,” says Saxena.
Another attractive part of OCMS.in is its fees. Each course is pegged at Rs 15,000, which makes it affordable to any Indian with a passion for journalism.
The icing on the cake is the Learn and Earn programme. OCMS provides writing assignments to its best students enabling them to earn money after finishing their course.
The enrolment process is simple. A student can pay the fees either online using the payment gateway or offline through a cheque or demand draft. The college makes sure that the student is enrolled within 24 hours of paying the fees.
Besides being India’s first online journalism school, OCMS also plans to be India’s number one media portal. It has built a huge resource section that provides details about media fellowships, media books, media statistics, media laws, ethical guidelines, etc.
OCMS.in also aims to be a bridge between the industry and the academia, and has built a special section where journalism students and scholars can host their research work. “Today, barring the researcher no one is aware of the kind of work that is being done in the field of journalism education,” says Saxena. OCMS hopes that over a period of time this will become a valuable resource for all students of journalism.
Another unique concept that OCMS has introduced is MediaLab. “This is like a live classroom,” says Saxena. “Every day OCMS staffers go through newspapers and telecasts and put up examples of good and bad journalism. This content is invaluable not only for students of journalism but for journalists too.”
OCMS visitors can also go through major journalism videos that have been hosted in the VideoLog. “These videos have been taken from different sites and users can get a wonderful perspective on different journalism issues by clicking on them.,” says Saxena.
Site visitors can also keep themselves updated on the latest goings on in Indian journalism by visiting the section InNews. They can also browse interviews of leading media personalities in MediaSpeak, and get fresh perspectives on key media issues.