Daily Trust Foundation has conducted a three-day workshop on Copy Editing for journalists who are line editors and sub-editors with Daily Trust newspaper and other media platforms in Abuja.
The three-day workshop began on Monday, June 22, 2020 and ended on June 24, 2020. It took place at 3J’s Hotels, Utako, Abuja.
As a way of observing social distancing protocol, the 24 participants were spread out in a large conference room which is meant for an average of 100 persons.
The Editor-in-Chief of Daily Trust, Malam Naziru Mikailu, declared the workshop open by reiterating the importance of copy editing in print and online media.
Explaining that Nigerians who buy newspapers are usually the elite in the society who understand how the English language should be used, the EiC said grammatical and writing errors could be costly, because it puts off premium readers from making a repeat purchase. He encouraged the participants to put in their best to withstand tough competition in the media market.
The General Manager, Human Resources of Daily Trust, Hajiya Hadiza Bello, also charged the participants to apply what they learnt at the workshop to their job, because that would be the only way they could make appreciable career progression.
She said “capacity building is a top priority in HR,” and thanked the Daily Trust Foundation for organizing the training.
The Programme Director of Daily Trust Foundation, Dr Theophilus Abbah, told the participants that the workshop sessions were targeted at tackling perennial grammar and style problems in Daily Trust. He said the Foundation took time to review stories in the newspaper and identified frequent and besetting errors, which were addressed at the three-day workshop.
The topics included the presentation of Baseline Research into Grammar and Style issues in Daily Trust; Principles of Copy Editing; Basic Grammar and Style for Journalists; Practical Copy Editing; Handling Punctuation Marks and Photograph Captions; and How to Cast Effective Headlines.
The facilitators included Dr. Theophilus Abbah; Omolara Odugbemi, a former Editor of Leadership Weekend; Uduak Amimo, a consultant with Trust TV; Rasak Yusuf, a former Assistant Editor-in-Chief with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN); and Abdulkareem Baba-Aminu, the General Editor of Daily Trust newspaper.
