Digital Journalists Association of India launched - First of its Kind Initiative in India

Digital Journalists Association of India (DiJAI), the recent initiative of your ezine PreSense, was inaugurated on 2nd April 2016 at IIT Madras by Dr Santhosh Babu IAS, Chairman of Tamil Nadu Handicrafts Corporation. The inauguration was followed by a workshop on "Essentials of Digital Journalism". Highlights of the speeches:

Dr Santhosh Babu, IAS - Inaugural Speech

• The digital audience of today want to see latest and up-to-date news and not news that is even a day old. Digital journalists should cater to the needs of smart phone users also.

• Digital journalists should learn to use the 'Big data' to understand human preferences and help make their stories more meaningful.

• Professional ethics should be inculcated as each digital journalist's personal 'Lakshman Rekha'. DiJAI should facilitate this and create awareness.

Dr B Muthukumaran, Technology Expert - "Digital journalism Tools"

• Present day readers are not satisfied with just stories. They demand supporting data too.

• Big data can be used to solve complex problems in digital journalism.

• There are several free tools in the internet that can be effectively used by the digital journalists.

• Drupal and WordPress (both open source) can be used for news sites. Recently, New York Observer migrated from Drupal to WordPress.

• 'Google Translate' Android app can be used to interact with people of different language.

Dr Muthukumaran's Presentation can be downloaded from the link http://goo.gl/a3soVI

N Ramesh, Advocate - "Legal Aspects in Digital Journalism"

• The Indian Constitution is the basis for fundamental rights. The Constitution does not provide any special freedom to 'Press'. The rights and duties applicable to all the citizens are applicable to the media too.

• In the case of messages, where intrusion of privacy is involved, all the persons who have shared such messages defaming others are chargeable with civil and criminal liability. However, statements made in the public domain are subject to criticism. Such criticism will not come under defamation.

• 'Hate speech' and 'defamation' have different definitions.

• Many digital media writers do violate several codes. The Government should enact laws to regulate the digital media.

Cyber Simman, Technology Columnist and Senior Journalist - "Ethics in Digital Journalism"

• All journalists, including digital journalists, should be aware of the do's and don'ts.

• Basic ethics have not changed over the years, in spite of all development and progress. They however need to be updated.

• Digital journalists should follow four important fundamentals viz. (1) accuracy and truth, (2) reliability, (3) responsibility and (4) neutrality.

• The fear, concern and debates that are being held today due to the growth of digital media, were present even in 1858 when the telegram was introduced. It is considered the second revolution in media, the first being the printing technology. The telegram when introduced, was considered 'too fast for the truth'.

DiJAI plans to conduct similar workshops to hone the professional skills and to bring together digital journalists at a global level.

Founders of DiJAI

Prime Point Srinivasan (Editor in Chief, PreSense)

V Rajendran (Cyber Advocate and Editorial Team of PreSense),

Susan Koshy (Editor, PreSense),

R Nurullah (Senior Tamil journalist)

Dr Sudarshan Padmanabhan (Associate Professor, IIT Madras)

E Perumal alias Bharathi Thamizhan (Online Editor, The Tamil Hindu)

Suryah SG (Mg. Editor, New Gen Thamizhan)

For more details, visit www.dijai.in. DiJAI can be reached at dijai.india@gmail.com.

By K. Srinivasan, Editor in Chief , PreSense