Class photo of Asia Journalism Fellows and the advisors

A Chinese proverb says: “Time flies like an arrow.”  In our case too, a week passed like a blink.

On the day of arrival in Singapore, we were little shy and hesitant. Everything was new. We were shaking hands and introducing ourselves in a very formal way: “Nice to meet you. I’m from …”

After a week, we all are enjoying each other’s company. Sometime, we fool each other with great love and admiration calling “Mr Philippines” or “Ms China”. The time has done wonder to us: it brought us very close.

Now we are like a bird’s feathers flocking together!

I am among the seventeen Asian journalists who are in Wee Kim Wee School of Information and Communication, Nanayang Technological University (NTU) of Singapore as Asia Journalism Fellows 2010. In addition, six journalism students at NTU are participating as associate fellows. We all are here with plans to complete a research. But we all share a common dream: good journalism.

On February 8, AJF director PN Balji and associate professor Cherian George, head, Journalism and Publishing at Wee Kim Wee School of Information and Communication, NTU welcomed us. In the program, the advisors of our research projects and trustee Temasek Foundation were present. All the fellow participants gave brief introductions and general overview of media in their countries.

After the meeting we went to see the library. Seven libraries of the University impressed us. They have a huge deposit of the resources. In addition, the online library serves you a lot. At a time we can borrow up to 40 books. Some of our fellows are in a mood to swallow all the books. Hey, please give some respite to your body and celebrate the Chinese New Year, which falls on February 14 (And, isn’t that the Valentine Day too?).

On February 9, Cherian George gave an overview of Singaporean media. For the outsiders, Singapore media is not free. However, in Singapore people do not bother to go beyond what government is doing. The media is not aggressive to shape public opinion.

A thing is clear that the Singapore media doesn’t look beyond its own country. In Singapore, the government is the main news maker. It seems there is the lack of diverse news sources. There’s opposition party, but opposition voice is not much in the surface. I think the happy state and good governance has overshadowed the critical approach.

On February 10, Geraldine Low took us for trip to China Town. She showed us the historic places, old settlements and war memorials. We all enjoyed the city view, took pictures and had delicious Muslim cuisine. Singapore is a multicultural country, where Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and other religions coexist. This society is mixed one, and they respect each other.

Last but not the least, yesterday, we visited MediaCorp, a giant media holding company of Singapore. It has newspapers, radios and TV channels. The convergence newsroom is one of the interesting aspects of the company. It has started an integrated newsroom, where the reporters and editors could work for all the medium. Something like one-man-army approach in media.

In a formal program, a reporter could go to cover, but s/he is expected to bring voice for radio, footage for TV and quotes for the newspapers. According to Mustafa Shafawi, Senior Executive Editor of NewsHub at Mediacorp, they can save the resources and they could spare reporters for other coverage.

We fellows were curious on such media practice and posed a lot to questions to him. I’m sure some of  the fellows would go back home and talk about this interesting experiment.