An ICT expert, Aloy Atsenokhai, on Thursday called on newsmen to leverage on advanced technology tools that would enable them to work at optimal speed and more efficiently.
Mr Atsenokhai said this at the ongoing 5-day training for Nigerian Information Technology Reporters Association, NITRA, organised by the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, in Abuja.
The theme of the training, “Digital Skills in News Reportage for ICT Journalists”, was targeted at equipping journalists with modern day capacity to report and be at par with their global counterparts.
The expert spoke on Journalism in a Digital World and urged journalists not to remain mundane in their ways of reporting.
According to him, Alvin Toffler’s quote which says, “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”, should be their watch word.
“A lot has changed with the way journalists have been known to perform their core tasks over the years and technology has been the major disruptor in the way we do things generally.
“The modern day journalist must be prepared for the huge demands of digital age or the dinosaur effect will set in.
“Speed is an essential element of today’s journalism and every journalist requires a medium for fast, reliable and efficient editing, transcription and news reporting,” he said.
He said that technology existed that could convert speech into text and international language to any language of choice, among other functions.
He, however, recommended Happy Scribe, an online software that speeds up the transcription process by using Automatic Speech Recognition engines.
According to him, Happy Scribe has subtitle tool, could convert video and audio to text and available in over 119 languages.
Mr Atsenokhai said that speed was needed to ensure that journalists did not turn out stale stories.
NAN
