Utilising Mojo Kits for Journalism training in Papua New Guinea

 

Introduction

The Media for Development Initative (MDI) is funded by the Australian Government through the PNG Australia Partnership and managed by the ABC International Development (ABCID). The initiative was launched in 2005 at the request of the PNG National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) as a media capacity building program and have its scope broaden to provide support to all mainstream and church media organistions as well as the NBC. MDI facilitates training aimed at improving craft skills and content standards and also provides support for organizational strengthening plus audience focused content creation.

Participants of the training.

MDI invited DWU to attend the training in Port Moresby and then receive the mobile journalism kits. DWU attended the training and received six (6) mojo kits from MDI. The group that attended (this was the fourth cohort for mojo training) was divided into three groups where one group would take a day off while two groups went to sessions run by the trainers. 

Report of Activities

Tuesday 18^th November – Free Day.

I went up to Vision City PIH clinic to have my eyes checked and get new glasses.

Wednesday 19^th November – Mojo Kit Set Up

The class was divided into two groups. The mainstream media and the institutions. The institutions - Melanesian Institute and DWU began by looking at the kit while the mainstream did a separate session with Laura Lauth on using Canva to create tiles. Both have worked with ABC for a number of years.  

In the morning, the trainer Dave McMeekin introduced the session and himself. He then showed a video of what ABC Australia had been doing using the Mojo Kits in reporting. It was good to see that journalists in rural Australia were using the kits to report news.

The mojo kit when assembled 

After that he began to show us the contents of the bag. I bag contained a lot of accessories. After that he showed us how to set up the phone on the tripod and used a mobile app to check sound and then another app to shoot the video footage on.

Dave showing us how to use the mojo device

He then instructed us to practice interviews using the kit. The kit set up included the phone in a titanium holder, wireless mics and lights. Each of us conducted an interview with each other (I interviewed Maggie; Alison interviewed me and Maggie interviewed Alison). He showed us how to use the mojo kit to move from person to person during the interviews rather than being stationary.

Dave put the clips onto the computer and we watched the results.

After shooting our practice interviews, we watched it on the laptop

After lunch, he told us to develop a short video story on any topic. We were to shoot a story, edit it and then present it to him. Since we were in a hotel, the three of us decided to do one on challenges of working with the hospitality industry. We went around the hotel and asked staff – male and female on their work and challenges they faced. We interviewed four female staff and one male staff. We also shot cutaways for the video as well with the staff and the hotel environment as well.

We came back and Dave asked us to edit the clips to form a video using the editing app on the phone (I-Movie). We completed the video by 4pm and submitted the video to him.

After shooting the video clips we came back to edit the video on the phone app (I-Movie)

We then completed the workshop.

Thursday 20^th November – Developing tiles for social media

In this session Laura went through the use of tiles in news production on social media particularly Facebook. A tile is a square space/image where one or two photos of the news are placed together with the title of the story. We went through two exercises to create tiles using Canva. I have already used Canva a lot for design stuff here at DWU but this was my first time to create a tile and use it with a caption. A caption is the actual news story or a short paragraph that directs you to another website. Both the tile and the caption work together as a post on Facebook to get interaction from audiences. The caption needs to complement title, not repeat it.  

Lara talking about creating the tiles and its benefit for audiences on social media particularly Facebook.

One of the most important thing I was reminded of was when people scrolling through social media – media professionals have only 3-seconds to get the attention of audiences. If your tile does not stop them, they audience member just moves on without click and reading your stuff. Due to the three second rule to hook audiences, your social media post can have three important things – a) message, b) text and c) listen. This means your post on social media must be something that people can see, hear and listen to if they are to stop and check out your content. In a social media world where there is competition from other organizations, your tile and captions have to be good. It is also mindful to note that when people are using social media, they might be travelling or in office so they will mute sound so when you have video on social media, you must have video captions.

We did two exercises to develop tiles using Canva.

Then we ended the day.

Friday 21 November  - Presentation Day

The program began at 9am. Many of the organisations had they managers invited to pick up the kits. For us at DWU, a staff Mr. Ruba Ogomei was invited and arrived and was presented with the kits. DWU received 6 mojo kits. By 10am, the program was done.

We later made a decision to take all the phones and one bag and tripod with us to Madang.  Here is a report of the training as published by the Post Courier. News Report

Post Courier: https://www.postcourier.com.pg/png-journalists-and-teaching-professionals-undergo-training-from-abc/?fbclid=IwY2xjawOUi_1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEehZ4aefMU37zNVJocJzyT31VY67Xu5sAinvNwCLXSQN3f7eR2mUKuqMdkF90_aem_lYuZsr7Qni-jEJO4ySK-3w

Conclusion

It was a really good training for me. I got to see how to set up the kit, shoot and edit with the kit itself in the first part of the training. It was also good to see the accessories of the kits. I was really impressed with Rode Wireless microphones. In the second part, since I had already used Canva, it was not a new process for me. I would have liked to have spent a bit more time on the social media strategy than the Canva exercise.  

All in all, it was an opportunity to get training on the use of Mojo kits particularly the iPhone 16 Pro Max and its use in creating content for social media.