from Rahul Kumar
for Daijiworld Media Network – Udupi/Manipal (GA)
Udupi, Apr 18: A two-day Manipal Media Students’ Convention’08 was inaugurated at Chaitya hall today by M V Kamath, former chairman of Prasar Bharati and honorary director of Manipal Institute of Communication.
During the inauguration he said, “The language of communication has changed. Now we have web-log and blogs that take us entirely to a new world of communication. Blogging has assumed a greater importance nowadays in terms of its relation with journalism. Large numbers of journalists in the west especially in the US have taken to blogging as a way of expressing themselves freely without the constraints of editorial control.”
The foundation of media council was also laid by M V Kamath on the occasion.
The two-day event started with a workshop on podcasting by Aditya Mhatre.This was followed by the first-ever Manipal Bloggers’ meet.
Annie Zaidi during the bloggers meet
M V Kamath during the inauguration ceremony
Annie Zaidi (Tehelka journalist and a passionate blogger), Peter Griffin (communications consultant, travel writer, columnist, and a famous blogger), Chandrahas Choudhary (writer and a passionate blogger) and other prominent personalities from the field of blogging talked about the various topics related to blogging in the meet.
“Nowadays blogging is being promoted even by other forms of media including print and electronic. They even take contents from blogs these days. Blogs also are becoming more and more effective in terms of creating public awareness. This had happened during tsunami when blogs on tsunami were trusted more than the other forms of media. I personally think all the reporters should have their own blogs because they can put some more information on that as they do lot of research before doing any story which sometimes does not come in front of the common people due to some reason,” said Annie Zaidi.
On the occasion Chandrahas Choudhary said, “Blogging takes less time to reach the mass as compared to the other forms of media. Blogs can spread to a large number of people within no time. It is due to this reason that blogging has affected the old form of writing literature which generally takes a lot of time to reach the common people.”
Dr Rajshekhar Warrier, vice-chancellor of MU also spoke at the occasion on medical blogging. Around 200 students from more than 15 colleges including NITK Suratkal and NITTE were present during the convention.
The theme of this year’s convention is ‘Communication Through the World-wide Web’ and it has been organized by the students of Manipal Institute of Communication.