PAKISTANI JOURNALISTS APPLAUDED FOR INNOVATIVE MEDIA INITIATIVES AT THE INNOVATION JOURNALISM CONFERENCE AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

Stanford (CA), USA 19 May – The Vinnova Stanford Research Center of Innovation Journalism holds its Sixth Conference on Innovation Journalism at Stanford University.

The conference, a two-day event being held between May 18-20, includes the participation of working journalists, policy-makers in media and innovation, academic researchers, faculty and students in related areas of study, and other professionals connected to the news industry across the world. The Innovation Journalism conference, since its start in 2004 has become a global platform and meeting place for discussing the best ways of covering innovation in the news, the business of doing that work, and how innovation journalism interacts with society.

The first day of the conference included keynotes on the crisis and the opportunities for journalism and also workshops on Innovation Journalism best practices. The sessions ranged from the business models of innovation journalism to how to cover innovation - a 'horizontal' topic, crossing the normal production lines in the news room.

Among the leading key speakers was Mr. Amir Jahangir, Chief Executive Officer of SAMAA TV, one of Pakistan’s leading Urdu news channels. Mr. Jahangir and other representatives of SAMAA TV were selected as key presenters for the IJ-6 based on SAMAA TV’s leading initiatives for the socio-economic development of Pakistan through innovative programmes.

Speaking on the new media development in Pakistan, Amir Jahangir said that “the recent media boom within the past 7 years has led to growth of many news channels with a majority of them focusing on news and current affairs, which has resulted in driving the largely young population by fresh ideas and adapting modern ways of learning and keeping themselves aware. The Pakistani media has arrived, it is independent, evolving and becoming a platform for the entire nation’s expression and hope”.

Mr. Jahangir said that the media independence and its growing following and influence is not only bringing about a social change but a complete re-engineering of the entire societal structure. Speaking on media as a business, he said “Media is consistently attracting investments, human resources and audience. With more research, development of specific academic infrastructures, induction of technology and more innovative forms of journalism, I assure you this sector will not only evolve itself but will also demonstrate the capacity to influence every other sector that comes into contact with it”.

Mr. Jahangir concluded his speech by highlighting the importance of the Asian region, sharing that it consists with over a third of the world’s population, a population which is young, mostly between 16 to 30 years of age and include a set of emerging and still vibrant economies. Mr. Jahangir said that the future of the media in the Asian region was promising and hopeful and would play an important role in leading the world in to what could as well be the Asian renaissance.

Ms. Shahray Zariff, Executive Producer, SAMAA TV spoke on the launch of the first programme on Innovation in Pakistan, another leading initiative by SAMAA TV. Ms. Zariff shared that the objective of the program is to identify and highlight innovation initiations and processes relevant in Pakistan (which can range from technical, business and social etc) and benchmark them against international definitions and standards. The program looks at innovation as a holistic process and highlights the link between technical innovation and its social and cultural impact. The programme is produced in collaboration with the innovation journalism fellows across the world.

Ms. Fatima Akhtar, Sr. Manager Interactive Platform, SAMAA TV presented SAMAA’s vision behind launching its interactive platform, another initiative taken by SAMAA to link innovation with the new media development and with the aim to unite audiences and provide them with a platform whereby, they can initiate a healthy “dialogue”. Apart from providing credible news stories to societies around the world, this interactive platform also allows audiences to share their content with SAMAA.

Capitalizing on the potential offered by new media, SAMAA’s citizen journalism initiative i.e. iSAMAA aims to create content through collaboration and partnerships. One of the most significant milestones achieved through this initiative was SAMAA TV’s partnership with ALLVOICES.COM (a citizen journalism startup based out of San Francisco and another initiative of Innovation Journalism Fellow). SAMAA is also collaborating with a local citizen journalism portal: SeenReport (start up out of Lahore University of Management Sciences) in this regard. The uniqueness of the portal is that, amongst the different categories, there is also a beat on “INNOVATION” whereby, users can upload content relevant to this particular beat.

The objective behind this collaboration to allow citizens to come together and create a more effective communication amongst different communities thus, shifting from their role of “consumers” to “innovators and co-producers” of knowledge and information.

During the various presentations, one of the most applauded initiatives among the participants was SAMAA TV’s innovative health communication programme for the Pakistan Polio Programme, the “Polio Control Cell”. The presentation was given by Ms. Meher Bukhari, Senior Producer of SAMAA TV.

SAMAA TV’s Polio Control Cell was established in joint collaboration with UNICEF and Ministry of Health, which provided a platform for the health authorities to reach out to the most vulnerable communities and include every child below 5 years in the national polio vaccination programme. Due to this joint venture, a total of 14,500 complaints were recorded and managed by the television channel resulting in vaccinating 22,000 children, who otherwise would have been left unvaccinated, hence resulting in the re-emergence of the Polio virus in the region.

This initiative managed a big challenge on ground by empowering the media to play the role of the watch dog and pressurize the health authorities to deliver on improving the health service delivery systems. The initiative has also been recognized as a bench mark for future Polio campaigns around the world by Global Director of the World Health Organization, Bruce Alyward and the founder of the Bill and Melinda GatesMelinda Gates Foundation, Bill GatesBill Gates at their maiden visit of Nigeria this year.

The initiative between UNICEF and SAMAA TV lead to a unique innovation in health delivery mechanisms and created an opportunity for the media in Pakistan to report on this innovation.

Mr. David Nordfors, co-founder and Executive Director of the VINNOVA Stanford Research Center of Innovation Journalism reinforced the importance of innovation in today’s global development by saying that “for journalism to survive, it must succeed with innovation. Journalism needs to innovate to survive as a business, which means that citizens, students, workers, executives, all of us need to innovate in response to tectonic economic upheaval. Journalists have the critical and vital role of independent investigation, gathering and presenting news to increase general understanding of the engines of innovation”.

Some of the other keynote speakers included Mr. Vint CerfVint Cerf, founder of the Internet and VP of Google, who talked about the economics and technologies of journalism and Curtis Carlson, President of SRI International, also known as a global innovation guru.

The Innovation Journalism Program at Stanford also organizes the Innovation Journalism Fellowships, where each year a selected number of journalists mix workshops and conferences at Stanford with covering innovation in collaboration with hosting newsrooms. The fellowship program is operated in collaboration with IIIJ, the International Institute of Innovation Journalism, a non-profit foundation which serves the program at Stanford with off-campus activities.

SAMAA TV is one of Pakistan’s leading private satellite channels, which takes pride in its fair, factual and independent news coverage through its on-the-hour bulletins, breaking stories, incisive political analysis and current affairs programs. The channel has also made a niche for itself through its programs on women and youth issues besides infotainment. SAMAA TV, launched in December 2007 is the only Pakistani news channel, which is run as a corporate company rather than as a family owned business.