Sun looks abroad for skills, mentors
Title -- 3840 FIJI: Sun looks abroad for skills, mentors
Date -- 14 November 2002
Byline -- None
Origin -- Pacific Media Watch
Source -- Wansolwara (USP), November
Copyright -- USP Journalism
Status -- Unabridged
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SUN LOOKS ABROAD FOR SKILLS, MENTORS
by Cordula Greuel
a German student journalist with USP
SUVA (Wansolwara/Pacific Media Watch): Recruiting journalists from overseas is one of the options being considered by the new publisher of Fiji's The Sun, Michael Richards, to make up for what he says is a lack of skills and experience available locally, reports Wansolwara.
Richards, 42, an experienced community newspaper journalist from Sydney, started work with the Sun on a three-year contract last month.
He says the lack of skilled journalists in Fiji is a big problem.
"Few are trained properly, mostly simply learn from their colleagues and superiors, who in turn learned from their colleagues and superiors," Richards says.
There are also a high number of journalists who frequently move between Fiji's three national daily newspapers.
According to Richards, the answer is fresh blood from offshore and lots of training.
He says that if he cannot find the kind of mentors that he is looking for regionally, he will turn to New Zealand and Australia.
"There are some talented writers in this country and they are exceptional - but it's not the norm," he says.
"The standards are low because people haven't had access to good training. My staff are crying out for training."
Although there are key areas, which need improvement, basic skills "like English grammar, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure are also missing", he adds.
Richards has been in the media for 23 years.
He was previously group publisher of the Sydney-based Courier newspaper group, which has seven weekly newspapers with a combined circulation of 470,000 copies.
Previously, he managed the marketing and sales for News Ltd's Leader newspaper group in Melbourne, the largest suburban newspaper chain in Australia with 31 titles.
He sees the Sun as "a vital, young and fresh newspaper".
But that is not enough for him.
"The standards that the Sun is currently projecting are average. I don't want to be average. I want to be exceptional.
This has called for some major and immediate changes.
"I have already started on a development plan," he says.
"I will be building teams tp work on different projects to develop the Sun and they include everything from our pictorial assessment, the way we choose and use photographs, the way we use fonts, the way we lay out our pages and the way we introduce stories."
PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH is an independent, non-profit, non-government organisation comprising journalists, lawyers, editors and other media workers, dedicated to examining issues of ethics, accountability, censorship, media freedom and media ownership in the Pacific region. Launched in October 1996, it has links with the Journalism Program at the University of the South Pacific, Bushfire Media based in Sydney, Journalism Studies at the University of PNG (UPNG), the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and Community Communications Online (c2o).
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