A three-day training on Entrepreneurial Journalism was held on January 26th, 27th and 28th, 2021 in Islamabad with journalists from across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Islamabad/ Rawalpindi areas.
On the first day of the Pakistan Entrepreneurial Journalism Program’s Islamabad cohort, senior journalist Aoun Abbas Sahi spoke about the history and development of digital media in the world and Pakistan. Founder of The Centrum Media, Talha Ahad delivered a talk on building and sustaining a news startup, while senior journalist and Managing Editor of Independent Urdu Haroon Rashid spoke about ethics in digital media.
Trainers discussed establishing startups and finding the right audience and platform for the content on the first day of the training.
On the second day of the training, Mr. Ali Raza (Google certified trainer and top blogger in Pakistan) and Ms. Faiza Khalid (Digital media marketing expert & founder of LOOP) worked with participants to help them understand digital media marketing, entrepreneurship and building digital news startups.
These sessions were about hands-on, practical learning about setting up WordPress, and did exercises which helped participants find their niche and narrow down their idea.
On the third day, Mr. Badar Khushnood (founder Bramerz Pakistan and a growth-hacker briefed participants about digital news media landscape in Pakistan, insights, penetration of digital news media, disruption, survival of the fastest and why startups fail to familiarize them with today’s fast paced startup models and digital needs.
Mr. Khushnood also spoke about the challenges in the tech industry of Pakistan, such as regressive policies and issues like lack of bank accounts and credit cards. However, he said, there are a few opportunities as well, such as the fact that the country has a majority of young people in the population and that the present government has promoted digital technology and is relatively tech-savvy.