Media and the web: journalism geared to young people

These journalists and bloggers – from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – received guidance from two experts to promote their projects and consolidate their skills. They were selected from around forty applicants in a call for projects. This great enthusiasm is proof of the appropriateness of launching new formats on young people's preferred media.

The projects being supported include Womanager, the first all-female online magazine in Mali, Médiator, a Burkinan digital enterprise committed to media education and combating disinformation, and Cyber Griot, a Nigerian media blog, dedicated to making new forms of technology more accessible to the general public.

Denise Coulibaly (Savane FM), and Fatoumata Togola (Studio Tamani) familiarise themselves with the different pieces of mobile video production equipment.

Throughout their coaching, the journalists enhanced their knowledge about writing for the web, mobile videoing and fact-checking. The methodology selected favoured continual dialogue, alternating between theory, practical exercises, and time for discussion. This interactive format facilitated the learning of new skills, by making it easy for the coaches to adapt their approach to suit the trainees' projects and pace.

"The discussions with the trainers were rewarding, valuable and top quality. They gave us access to relevant content for all the themes raised. And more importantly, they shared their experience of the media world with us."
Ténin Samake, founder and editor of Womanager, a media blog on the empowerment, liberation and well-being of African women.

Following this two-week training course, these journalists are better equipped to develop appealing interactive online formats for the young of the Sahel and to make a lasting success of their editorial projects. They will continue to benefit from monitoring as part of MédiaSahel and to take part in future training sessions.

"Those two weeks helped us make progress in running our project. We understood the relevance of migrating our site content from SPIP to WordPress. And we acquired a method for integrating multimedia content on our website, through the creation of a YouTube channel for videos and SoundCloud for sound."
Notre Nation (Our Nation) online media journalist.