Daily Trust Foundation inaugurates media enterprise lab, trains 25 in digital marketing

Daily Trust Foundation on Monday inaugurated its media enterprise lab designed to help media professionals build a new career out of low-hanging skills acquired on the job.

It covers digital marketing, film and documentary production, book writing and editing, document digitisation, managing not-for-profit and multimedia journalism skills for freelancers.

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The media enterprise lab commenced on Monday with the training of 25 media personnel in digital marketing which is meant to take participants through the dynamics of the digital world and how to be creative and generate income from it.

The intensive training programme which is in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation is to run for two months.

Speaking about the objectives of the media enterprise lab, Malam Mannir Dan-Ali, a member of the Daily Trust Foundation board, charged media professionals to “think beyond today”.

While expressing regrets that most journalists were going after politicians for crumbs, the former Daily Trust Newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief said, “you are comfortable today but you have to think beyond today’s meal.”

Malam Dan-Ali, who leads the training unit of the Foundation, charged journalists to take the bold step to better their lives, saying “those doing it don’t have two heads.”

Speaking earlier, the Chairman of Daily Trust Foundation, Alhaji Bilya Bala, said the lab was designed with the idea that journalists should be able to continue holding government accountable even after leaving their paid employments.

He, therefore, charged the participants to make the best of the trainning programme.

On his part, the Director (Africa) MacArthur Foundation, Dr Kole Shettima, said there was a need for a strong media to make democracy to work in the country, adding that the programme was designed to put the media in a better position to hold government officials accountable.

“Independent media needs independent sources of income. We want our media houses to have multiple sources of income so that they don’t depend on anybody to be able to remain in business,” he stressed.