By Blessing Ita
Following the successful completion of the one-day virtual workshop on: “Career Roadmap For 2024”, organized by the Step-Up for Women in Journalism Initiative (SWIJ), in collaboration with Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), over the weekend, media experts have admonished journalists to build and develop a career roadmap that would enable them reach their peak.
They also emphasized the need for journalists to identify and create a niche for themselves.
One of the media experts, the guest speaker, and the managing director of National Point (Newspaper), Ibiba Don-Pedro, said actions such as starting right, developing inner strength, and administrative competences were some of the boosters for achieving career targets.
Don-Pedro, an award-winning journalist,
encouraged reporters to be resilient, to go for knowledge, and to do great reports that would announce and reveal them. “It is not about gender, but who you are!”
In his submission, the executive director, Media Career Development Network, Mr Lekan Otufodunri, charged journalists to remain focused even when they failed to meet targets.
“It is important to be strategic about your career; have a career roadmap, it will aid your growth.”
Otufodunri further encouraged journalists to develop quality relationships and build mutual respect. “It is important to have a roadmap wherever we are going, including our careers.
“At the beginning of the year, we really need to be sure of what we want, based on what is available in terms of career development in the industry so that we can be sure of positive results as professionals,” he asserted.
The SWIJ team leader, Mrs Ann Godwin, said the training was aimed at bridging the gap between setting goals and working towards achieving them.
According to Godwin who is the head of the South-South Bureau of the Gaurdian, “Laziness and lack of focus to push one’s self are hindrances to achieving career goals.
“Some people are hitches to themselves due to lack of self-push.”
She expressed optimism that the training would spur journalists to set clear goals and work towards achieving them with buoyant results at the end.
