By Sonia Kaur
Chief Reporter, The Borneo Bulletin
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam
Hosted by the Rocky Mountain News

I have learned so much over the past few months during my fellowship. I cannot begin to think where to start or what to share with my colleagues back home in Brunei Darussalam.

One of the things that I have learned more than anything else during my five months at the Rocky Mountain News is using multimedia as a means of reporting.

I have learned to shoot videos, blog, Flickr and Twitter. As I’ve witnessed, this is a major turning point for the Rocky Mountain News especially with the Democratic National Convention coming to town from August 24-28, 2008.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to bring this skill back. This is because we don’t have a powerful enough website that can hold this much data. Another reason is because we don’t have the equipment to begin with and so far, there is no demand for us to post videos.

Blogging, however, is something we can try to adopt, so when I get back, I will share this idea with my editors and see what they think. I will show them a list of different types of blogs that could work for our paper. This can be done during a brown-bag session, a method of presenting a pitch to a small group of people, which I learned at the Rocky Mountain News.

If they are fine with it, I might just start writing my first blog for the paper’s website. It may not start as a daily blog, but most probably a weekly one. I might have to run the idea by my editors to see what kinds of issues would be worth blogging about. If it is successful it may even get published in the paper. So this is one idea I will try to implement.

Next, I guess for me is to get the reporters to be more involved in projects. What impressed me while I was at the Rocky Mountain News was that a lot of the reporters work together on a series. From all that hard work, the Rocky has won quite a number of awards, which all the reporters said it was worth the effort. And this takes a lot of commitment and dedication to work as a team. It is sad for me to say that this is one skill we lack at the Borneo Bulletin.

I believe it is time for us to get our act together and start working as a team. As for what kinds of projects we could do, I have written down a list of topics that may interest my home newspaper. I will share this with my editors over the brown-bag lunch or a short meeting. I have also collected some clips from the Rocky and I will show those to them.

I will also get input from the editors on the issues that would be worth turning into a series. That is if they agree it will work.

I plan to do all this during the second or third week of September. Because when I arrive it will be the start of Ramadhan and the newsroom will be busy working on the regular assignments related to that Holy Month. Plus my Deputy Editor with whom I work directly will not be around, and will be back only in the second week of September. I believe it would be best to have everyone back, so I can get as much input as possible. That way it will be more productive.

One skill that I have learned here which I will definitely bring back to my newsroom, especially for myself is the art of mentoring new aspiring journalists. Brunei does not offer any journalism classes or workshops, so that does not give people who are interested a chance to understand what is journalism and why it is important.

A lot of those who apply for a journalism job don’t even know what to expect when becoming a journalist. So just like me, when they first start they are thrown into the deep sea and are expected to swim. There are a lot of things these new reporters have to know and learn before going on assignment.

From my experience at the Rocky Mountain News, I got to sit back and observe how my mentors taught and trained me. I am one of the lucky Fellows who had more than one mentor. To be exact, I had 18 mentors, one for every week I worked at the Rocky Mountain News.

They took some time from their work and have put a lot of effort towards me. They showed me the ropes on how they cover their beats, from sports to energy, crime, city council meetings, telecommunications, environment, features, column writing as well as computer assisted reporting.

I have also watched how my mentors assigned me stories and walked through with me how to cover it, who to talk to and what kind of questions to ask. They would then have me write the article and when I was done they would sit beside me while they go through my facts and make sure I’ve got it all right and all the areas covered.

I’ve also compiled tips on how to be a mentor and train others on the basics of journalism, from understanding an assignment to interviewing to note taking, compiling notes, writing and self-editing. These are things that I’ve learned from my mentors, and they have helped me polish my journalism skills.

With this I will also try my best to teach the junior reporters how to carry out investigative journalism with the help and tips I got from the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) conference in Miami. And I plan to use the News University online journalism training courses, which are often free on www.newsu.org. I myself plan to complete some of them when I get back to Brunei.

I plan to execute this as soon as I return to Brunei. My editors told me that since I left Brunei for the fellowship, the paper has hired six new reporters. So I aim to take this as a challenge to mentor these new reporters. Hopefully I’ll be able to get through to them like my mentors got through to me.