Business journalists need to become one-man army

The future of business journalism is bright as it is an expanding field that is gaining importance, but the journalists themselves need to develop IT, digital, and multimedia skills in order to keep up with the fast-changing world, experts said yesterday.

Journalists now have to use their phones to capture footage and write stories as well as learn data journalism, coding, social media management and marketing to stay relevant in modern times.

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So, experts suggest that future journalists will have to evolve into a one-man army, according to Shawkat Hossain, head of online at the Prothom Alo, a leading Bangla-language newspaper.

"This is also applicable for business journalists but the gist is that only good journalism can take journalism forward," he said.

Hossain was addressing a roundtable, styled "Future of business journalism and ethics and etiquette in business reporting", organised by Management and Resources Development Initiative (MRDI) at Azimur Rahman Conference Hall at The Daily Star Centre.

He presented a paper on the policies, ethics and etiquette of business journalism at the event.

In the '90s, journalists in Bangladesh were focused on reporting what the finance minister did and said at a time when the country's economy was undergoing massive reforms due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of capitalism.

As such, non-performing loans, new laws on the banking sector, headwinds in the stock market, reports from the World Bank, and founding of the World Trade Organisation were the main topics for business and economic journalism back then.

"But now the scope for business journalism has expanded as almost all newspapers have a separate page for business news while television channels allot separate time slots for such content," Hossain said.

Still though, the main challenge is making business news more mainstream and presenting it in a way that people can easily relate to, he added.

The MRDI recently concluded a training and mentorship programme where 15 journalists working in different print, television and online media houses were taught how to produce in-depth reports on contemporary issues of business and the economy.

Those journalists also participated in yesterday's roundtable.

Hasibur Rahman, executive director of the MRDI, said the capacity building programme was designed to train journalists on the modern techniques of business and economic journalism.

"It is now important to develop online courses for business and economic journalism so that a huge number of journalists can learn remotely," he added.

Rahman went on to say they developed an outline for a journalism course that is structured in a way that it would bring coherence between the newsroom and classroom.

The MRDI is noted for training journalists of all platforms and mediums in Bangladesh because of the quality of its trainers, depth of the topics and effectiveness of the sessions.

Justin Halpern, second secretary (political) of the US embassy in Dhaka, said responsible business conduct is a broad concept based on the idea that businesses can perform well while doing good and governments should create and facilitate the conditions for it to take place.

"The work that investigative journalists do -- the work that you do -- is vital for informing societies and promoting responsible business conduct," he said.

Kazi Faisal Bin Seraj, country representative for Bangladesh at The Asia Foundation, also spoke among others.