JEDDAH, 26 September 2003 — Arab News played host to another group of Filipino students on an educational field trip yesterday.

The students, from Bader International School (BIS) of Jeddah, were given an insight into news gathering and the basic operations of the newspaper by Arab News editors, a senior journalist and technical staff at the newspaper.

The students, principal and teachers found the trip stimulating.

“The students will be able to use the lessons and insights gleaned from this tour with their academic disciplines like English literature, history and in social sciences,” said Nenita Palmero, the BIS principal.

Editors L. Ramnarayan, Romy Tangbawan and reporter Essam Al-Ghalib were at hand to take questions from the students. One senior student — Mark J. Defensor — wanted to know how the paper weighs the news.

“The news has to have the strength and quality to arouse the interest of the reader,” Ramnarayan explained, adding that news dictates its own position.

“For the news to go on the front page, it has to be of local or regional interest or relevance,” he said.

The students asked Tangbawan if it is necessary for news to be proofed after it has been edited.

“Yes, it should be, because a third eye often sees things that the first two haven’t. Despite having been in the job for a long time, we are human and we sometimes make mistakes,” he said.

Senior student Krista Valleramos asked: “How do you know if the news is eye-catching?”

“A lot of news is eye-catching, but we have to make decisions based on our experience. There are space constraints, but we find that local news is what attracts most readers,” was the reply.

Junior student Windolf de Leon asked Al-Ghalib what the consequences are if a reporter crosses the line of what is acceptable to report. “I have never experienced that, but sometimes we do receive feedback from readers criticizing our stories, and we learn from it,” Al-Ghalib said.

The students completed their field trip with a fresh impetus to work on their language skills in case they might want to be journalists themselves one day.