The post graduates students of Mass Communication of Rivers State University, Port Harcourt have been told that diligence, proactiveness and drive for news sourcing are the bedrock for a successful professional journalism career.
The General Manager, of National Network Newspaper, Mr. Chris Konkwo gave this indication when he received in audience, post Graduate students of the   Rivers State University who visited the newspaper outfit in the course of their research and course of study ,over the weekend in Port Harcourt.
“You must equip yourselves with determinants of news or elements of news values to be able to have nose for news.”
He emphasised the need for journalists to have nose for news in any event, stressing that nose for news is dependent on the elements/determinants of news, saying that every news is information, but not every information is news and such, journalists are expected to differentiate between news and information while discharging their core responsibility.
The General Manager, who  stated that media houses have their in-house styles, explained that National Network Newspaper’s in-house  style starts with assigning journalists to different beats, adding that in planning, each  page runs on six news columns that is being demarcated by column rules that enable the news not to be muddled up.
He further explained that people would love to read your news if it possesse a good number of news components such as unusualness, impact, prominence, proximity, timeliness.
He narrated that the process of producing a newspaper starts with news gathering, which is also known as raw material gathering by the journalists, after ward these stories are submitted to the Group News Editor in the newsroom and later sent to the Computer Unit for typing and planning, noting that after proof reading, and corrections effected, these pages are sent on films, and subsequently the lithographers take it over from there and finally handover these pages to the Production Unit, which will in turn do the final publishing of the newspaper.
Konkwo stressed that after the raw materials are been typed, either by the journalists or the computer operators, it is then sent to the proof readers and back to the Computer Unit for final dropping of corrections.
Konkwo noted that gate keeping concept starts with the journalists, who go out there to get the news, saying the act by which a journalist is able to do his/her selection, rejection, accepting, while gathering the news is known as gate keeping, adding that both the editor and reporters are gate keepers.

By: Susan Serekara-Nwikhana