Samir Sabbah, the Vice-President of Reuters News Agency for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said the Reuters Foundation would assist the News Agency of Nigeria to further develop its multi-media products.
Sabbah, who said this when he visited the Lagos Directorate of NAN, noted that the assistance was in terms of training of NAN reporters in order to sharpen their skills in multimedia reportage.
He said: “Breaking news is anybody.
“You can be in a building and then you get fired, so we are teaching our own employees to shoot on this machine (iPhones).
“I think we can move quickly on that, probably after the summer in September if you are ready and if you have the pilot, you put 10 people on board.
“We can come, spend a week, I think the cost is minimal.
“We can do a first pilot if you feel this is something you can roll out, then we can do a programme quickly.
“The 10 people can then teach their colleagues right, then maybe we do one, two or three training courses.
“Then they train the trainer.”
The Agency;s vice president, who stressed the importance of mobile phone technology, said it was the fastest means of transmitting news these days.
Sabbah said high density mobile phone was all journalists needed to carry out their work effectively.
He added: “We have started running a course and I think it will be very beneficial to NAN.
“We have a course now, a weekly course, on how to shoot, edit and transmit from this (phone) and the quality is HD.
“And in terms of investment, we are talking about mobile phones, whether it is Samsung or iPhone, the quality of video you get is amazing.”
According to Sabbah, it is impressive and that is all journalists need to create alternative news service, as the transmission is almost free with the Internet.
Responding, Jide Adebayo, the Executive Director (Lagos Directorate) of NAN, said the effect of the Internet had made an appreciable impact on the print media.
Adebayo added: “The effect of the Internet has really taken a very big toll on quite a substantial part of the media.”
He said NAN has about 274 clients and are serviced with different products to suit their needs.
NAN.
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