Following a successful course in 2023, KAS Media Africa and the GSMC brough together experts from academia, digital and traditional newsrooms to facilitate a week-long course in newsroom conflict management. Among the returning facilitators were Joseph Warungu, journalist turned media trainer and consultant, Linus Kaikai, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Kenya’s Citizen TV, Dean of the GSMC, Dr Nancy Booker, veteran journalist, and lecturer at GSMC, Joseph Odindo, and Pamella Sittoni who is currently the Executive Editor at the Nation Media Group in Nairobi. Joining the facilitators for the first time were Nwabisa Makunga, Editor-in-Chief of South African daily, The Sowetan, Nigel Mugamu, founder, and CEO of Zimbabwe’s first WhatsApp paper, @263Chat and finally, Simon Allison who co-founded The Continent – a digital pan-African weekly publication.
Director of KAS Media Africa, Hendrik Sittig, noted in his welcoming remarks that amidst the everchanging structure of newsrooms, it is important to be responsive in a manner that recognises and solves conflict in its early stages. The week was spent interrogating and contextualising the various forms of conflict that arise in newsrooms. From emotional intelligence, ethics, gender, and mental health to religion, ethnicity, tribalism and race, no topic was left untouched.
Once again, the group and facilitators were a reflection of the diversity we have in newsrooms across the continent and that as leaders, they have more challenges in common than not. But also, that solutions and conflict resolution are a team effort, and that nobody is bigger than the team.
