Capacity building for Urdu journalists:Vernacular languages have power to connect us to roots: KU VC

Srinagar, Sep 11: Vice Chancellor, University of Kashmir, Prof Nilofar Khan on Monday said the vernacular languages have the power to connect youth back to their roots. She was speaking on the significance of the Urdu language.
Addressing a four-day capacity-building workshop for Urdu journalists that began on Monday here at the university’s main campus, the VC said, “The digital culture has brought many important changes in our lives but at the same time, there is a risk of getting distracted. And those distractions can be avoided if we inculcate and encourage the reading culture among our youth.”
Urdu has an amazing reach and young Urdu journalists, if trained well, can make amazing contributions to the development of their society and to whole humanity as well, Prof Nilofar added.
The aim of the workshop was to focus on enhancing the skills of budding journalists and those already working in the field.
The workshop is being organised by the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), New Delhi in collaboration with Dean School of Arts, Languages and Literature, and Media Education Research Centre (MERC), University of Kashmir.
Director NCPUL, Prof Aquil Ahmad said NCPUL has a huge budget for promoting Urdu journalism and that budget is allocated for encouraging healthy journalism.
“Urdu journalists need to understand media can play a significant role in nation-building provided they focus on positive developments and disseminate the information regarding journalism among the people,” he said adding, that bad practices like yellow journalism need to be checked and young journalists need to be encouraged in a proper direction to put the best use of their skills.
Stressing the importance of the workshop in helping the participants improve their journalistic skills, Dean School of Arts, Languages and Literatures, Prof Adil Amin Kak said Urdu has a long and shinning past and that it has great potential for “it is the language of masses here”.
Stressing ethical reporting, Director Institute of Kashmir Studies (IKS) and faculty at MERC, Prof Aliya Ahmad said journalists need to be good communicators in order to do justice with their job.
“Journalists can do well only if they are good communicators and best communication happens in one’s own language,” she said.
The inaugural session was followed by technical sessions on the future of Urdu journalism and feature writing wherein the participants engaged in practical exercises.