MEDIA SAVVY
IIMC Delhi doesn’t just focus on teaching its students journalism, but also on enriching their understanding of the world
Twenty-four-year old Krishna Raj, a commerce graduate from Delhi University, had joined the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, in April 2019 with just one aim—to study sports journalism. Nine months in, though, Raj can also write and research on environment, a subject he was not well-versed with. It’s not the lush green campus of the institute that motivated Raj to dabble in environmental journalism. It was the academic rigour of the English journalism (EJ) course at the IIMC, which prepares students to break barriers and practise professional versatility.
That’s not the only advantage though. In a pandemic-hit year, which saw the media industry cutting salaries and laying off employees, Raj managed to get recruited by a digital news platform at a salary of Rs 4.5 lakh per year. His batchmate, Himanshi Tiwari, bagged an internship with BBC News. “When I joined IIMC, I was not sure if a nine-month course would be able to teach me enough about journalism. But the EJ course is designed to offer the best of journalism in a short duration,” says Tiwari.
The PG diploma course in EJ is the flagship course of the IIMC, which also offers a PG diploma in print journalism in various languages, radio and TV journalism, and advertising and public relations.
With shifts in both presentation and consumption of news, the course is designed to train its students on the various aspects and techniques of evidence-based storytelling. The course lays importance on practical experience, focused on developing a student’s reporting and researching skills. EJ students even get opportunities to visit newsrooms of reputed media houses, both from print and TV.
Apart from news, EJ students are given training in the fields of public health and child rights issues, media laws and documentary-making. “During the course tenure, students are given practical, ethical and technical knowledge apart from hands-on workshops to tell stories through text, images, audio and video,” says Professor Surbhi Dahiya, course director, department of English journalism.
In November 2019, Dahiya organised a workshop on ‘Drone Journalism’, with three resource persons
from air force and media. Another workshop was conducted in the same month on mobile journalism. “The objective of these workshops is to not just help students learn new technologies, but to engage them in healthy debates over ethical issues related to new practices in journalism,” says Dahiya. Last year, the EJ department also organised a special lecture on investigative reporting delivered by Bill Hinchberger, former international correspondent of the Financial Times and Business Week.
EJ students excel in co-curricular activities, too; winning awards in various inter-college events. In January, two students secured first position in an English debate competition at the annual cultural festival “ALOHA 2020” organised by Delhi Metropolitan Education (DME), Noida. Another student won the first prize at a postermaking competition organised by the Union ministry of petroleum. The teachers at IIMC, too, have
been bringing glory to the institute on a global platform. Last year, Dahiya presented a research paper in the fifth World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) held at the Paris-Dauphine University. She also won first position at Laureate of the Community leadership contest at the WJEC Whova contest. In fact, IIMC is known for its world-class team of faculty and experts who guide and equip students for the challenges they will face in the field of journalism.
But IIMC is not just about journalism, it focuses on enriching a student’s overall understanding of the world. During an educational trip to McLeodganj last year, they had an
audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
IIMC has six centres—in Delhi, Dhenkanal, Aizawl, Kottayam, Amaravati and Jammu. The syllabus is reviewed annually to keep it relevant. The courses offered by the institute represent a meaningful blend of classroom teaching, rigorous exercises, lab journals and field visits. It has its own community radio station and a Community Radio and Research Centre, where the training ranges from content and resourcegeneration to learning about technology. Students are encouraged to establish their own community radio stations. It also has a vast library, which, the institute claims, has the largest collection of specialised study material for mass communications.