JEDDAH, 21 May 2003 — Arab News yesterday played host to 26 keen pupils from the Al-Waha International School in Jeddah.
As part of their English language curriculum, the pupils visited the paper’s newsroom, accompanied by their teachers Seema Anis Nayeem and Yasmeen Saleem, where they met reporters and editors and were introduced to the technical and news-gathering side of a national newspaper.
Gihan Ramadan, responsible for the Arab News website, gave the visitors a sneak preview of the redesigned online edition.
“I was surprised and delighted at the quality of the questions I was asked,” said Gihan. “It was clear that our guests had an interest and quite advanced understanding of the technology.”
News reporter Maha Akeel discussed the importance and methods of accessing information. “The pupils quickly latched on to the importance of personal contacts and input from colleagues,” she said, “as well as the tremendous resources for checking and verifying what comes from the Internet. They were very inquisitive.”
As an introduction to the function and purpose of a national newspaper, Mohammed Alkhereiji, a journalist, outlined the position of the newspaper in the information environment. “It is important that young minds understand how a newspaper can gather news and report it,” said Mohammed, “but equally important is that we show how a newspaper can form opinion as well. The visitors demonstrated a very keen appreciation of the issues involved.”
News gathering and the challenges of getting information, collating and writing it up in a newsworthy fashion occupied K.S. Ramkumar, the newspaper’s local reporter. “Many of the pupils were taking copious notes,” he said, “I am sure that in a few years we shall see some of them in the newsroom full time.”
The visitors wanted to know where the pictures came from and how they arrived on the pages. Hassan Adawi explained the Picture-Net that Arab News uses to capture, process and store the pictures it accesses around the world.
The final layout stage of putting the written material onto the page was explained and demonstrated by Hatim Mahdli. To the obvious fascination of the visitors, the familiar page layout of Arab News materialized on the screen in front of them to appreciative comments.
The guests then addressed questions to the staff of the paper. “These kind of visits should be encouraged,” said Mahmoud Ahmad, translator and local reporter, “especially among Saudi schools. It would help with the English language curriculum and introduce young people to a world of international events and opinion.”
