Happy 10th anniversary NewsDay

WHO are we?

Gender and Media Connect (GMC)

Membership organisation; and our members are both male and female journalists

Our goal is to strengthen the media ‘s role in promoting gender awareness in the Zimbabwean Society through gender sensitive and inclusive policies, practices, content, skills knowledge and attitudes that reflect regional and international standards.

Our Journey with NewsDay thus far…

We have been working with NewsDay since time immemorial from our days as to present day at two levels through their group; Alpha Media Holdings (mainstreaming their policies and operations from the board level to shop floor) and as an individual entity ( instrumental in helping them gender mainstream their newsroom from operations to content through technical support in form of trainings, research and awards).

The “Gains” of our partnership

Over the years; NewsDay has participated in various GMC commissioned Situational analyses and Baselines, which have been a “wake up call” for them to address the gender imbalances in their structures and content & to date we have assisted them in recording the following milestones: Staffing: inclusion and promotion of Females

Promotion of “more” media women within their structures that is Yvonne Gasura to news editor; Veneranda Langa has been “head” parliamentary reporter etc.

We have encouraged them to hold induction sessions for journalism students on attachment and in their group; NewsDay employs “more” female media and journalism interns

Benefits of our capacity building:

Over the years we have held in house trainings on (1) cultivating gender sourcing trends (2) safety and security (3) sexual harassment awareness (4) gender awareness

Recommendations from all these trainings have been shared with their Management and HR department and used to (1)address working conditions issues in their workplace (2) ensure that gender mainstreaming becomes a main indicator for their newsroom’s content.

Trained their reporters (local and provincial) and the latest been the Getting the Gender balance Right workshop in September 2019, where we were encouraging reporters to include diverse voices in their content when reporting on national issues

We trained acting news editor, Everson Mushava as one of their newsroom Gender Change Agents/ Gender Champions in 2015 when he was still a reporter at NewsDay

Gender Quality Assessment Checks

We constantly keep them in check as a newsroom with our periodic Gender quality assessments (media monitoring). These have become a practice and culture in news making which has led to an improvement in their news products with gender integration….

We are also bridge the information and knowledge gap between their journalists and women leaders as potential sources of news that is through newsroom- newsmaker meetings and have produced a women “experts” directory we call “According to Her”

Recognition

Over the years their reporters (both male and females) have been recipients of our gender sensitive reporting awards

We awarded them as an institution (Alpha Media Holdings) in 2018,– for having the highest numbers of females promoted at Editorial level

Tips for the next 10 years

Women still comprise a very small proportion of employees at NewsDay; especially in high decision making positions; there is need to make the media space conducive for women's’ career growth & empower and train them to withstand the pressures associated with higher level media jobs.

NewsDay should take steps to make itself more attractive for female applicants through engaging and encouraging female media students not to seek employment elsewhere upon graduating.

NewsDay should strive to meet the highest standards of professional conduct related to gender-balanced reporting by consulting existing frameworks and researches as well as working with organisations like GMC in order to increase their knowledge about contemporary trends and best practices on gender balanced reporting.