A ‘Media Writing Workshop

A ‘Media Writing Workshop’ was organised by the Department of Mass Communication, Patna Women’s College, on 31st March 2023. The resource person for the workshop was former senior journalist Amitabh Ranjan, who has served for more than two decades in different reputed print media houses of the country. Amitabh Ranjan has also worked for a leading PR firm, MSL, for one of its key clients, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and rendered his services to the Asian Development Research Institute, Bihar Government’s projects like District Gazetteers’ update, editing for an encyclopedia of state’s flora, text panels for Patna and Bihar museums among others. He writes book reviews for the Sunday Financial Express and a blog called Wordly Benefits for the online edition of The Indian Express is a weekly affair. Currently, he is active in the field of academics and has rendered teaching and training assignments at NIFT Patna and the Indian Institute of Coal Management, Ranchi. He serves as a Guest Faculty at Patna Women’s College, Patna.Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Ms Ankita began the session by welcoming the resource person. The session commenced by describing the various types of content in newspapers like news, features, editorial, marketing, etc., by the resource person. However, the main focus of the workshop revolved around the editorial content of newspapers. The workshop was divided in two parts where in the first session of the workshop, he explained to the students about different styles of writing for news, features and opinion pieces. He shared different tips and techniques for writing headlines, body and conclusion for the print media with the students.The second part of the workshop was rather interactive in which the students were invited to write a news story in their own words based on the information provided to them. The students participated with great enthusiasm and came forward with their write-ups of which some were highly praised by the key resource person. The workshop was attended by around 125 students of the departments of Mass Communication and Communicative English and Media Studies. The workshop was designed to help the students to learn the techniques of print media writing and help them to excel in their career in the same. At the end of the day, Ms Divya Gautam, Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, proposed the vote of thanks. The workshop was also attended by faculty members of the department Ajay Kumar Jha, Prashant Ravi and Gaurav Aranya along with Head of the department Ms Roma.