Industry trends made clear

A two-day workshop conducted by Mr. Ehtesham Shahid, Business Editor of Trends magazine arranged for the students of Print specialization of the Department of Media & Communications ended today. Being a close and compact group of eight students, it proved easier for Mr. Ehtesham to devote more individual attention and interact with the budding journalists on a more personal level.

The session concluded in the afternoon after an intensive session with Mr. Ehtesham covered topics revolving around the principles of magazine journalism. The first day of the workshop was held last Sunday (27.04.08) and saw students interacting with the editor on issues concerning idea conception, research interviewing, article structure and outlining. At the end of this, the students engaged in a fun exercise where they were provided with press releases and asked to determine if there was potential for a story in any of them. Although the exercise drove home how many hundreds of press releases are discarded by newspapers each day, it also emphasized the journalist's need to be well-informed of current happenings and world events, in order to see beyond the ordinary and churn out good stories.

Mr. Ehtesham's impressive work profile includes afflilations with big names like Indian Express Online Media, NDTV, Tata Interactive, BBC Hindi Service and CNN-IBN, New Delhi. In the span of these 11 years, he has also worked and contributed for the Financial Express, The Pioneer and Khaleej Times, to name some. His vast experience in the industry put him in a very apt position to field the queries about life in the industry that were lobbed at him. The students now eagerly await the promised industry visit to the Trends magazine's publishing house for a chance to experience the step-by-step process of the birth of a magazine up-front.

Trends is "the international magazine for Arab affairs" and is a respected choice for political and business leaders in and around the region. The print media students count themselves privileged in having had this opportunity to interact with an industry professional who held the calibre of showing them the art of setting trends.