‘We must skill up for jobs’
BLACK JOURNALISTS should embrace digital media to give themselves the edge in the face of the worsening job market. This was the key message from David Dunley Gyimah, an award-winning video journalist, addressing the annual NUJ Black Members Conference on March 7.
He urged delegates to the conference — entitled New Media, Diverse Platforms — to become multi-skilled, build their own websites and to use Twitter and Facebook as staff positions and freelance commissions dry up.
Digital media are not a threat, he said. “If journalism is about story-telling then why would we not want to use every single resource to tell those stories? Having a presence online give you some kind of fighting chance to suggest to people that you know what is going on.”
But there are limits to what black journalists can achieve online, the 40 black members at the conference were told. Lester Holloway, former editor of black newspaper New Nation, which folded in January, spoke of the “parlous state” of Britain’s ethnic minority press. He said small black-led websites would struggle to hold government and private companies to account in the same way that a printed national weekly publication could do.
He was supporting a call instructing the union to “seek the widest consultation on how to save and reinvigorate the Black and Ethnic press”.
The conference also reminded the NUJ to continue to prioritise its fight for equality for all members despite the credit crunch and increasing redundancies. Gemma Charles, a member of the Black Members Council, warned that race equality could fall off the negotiating agenda because of the worsening economic conditions.
The conference also saw the launch of a new information pack for asylum seeker journalists in the UK, who since last year have been eligible to join the NUJ.