The Sunday Mail
Samuel Tashinga Samoyo
LIKE what a Greek philosopher named Epictetus once said, “If you wish to be a writer, write.”
This quotation inspired me to write about the experience I had on a tour of Zimpapers head office at Herald House and at Star FM last week.
As a member of the Zimpapers Junior Media Club and learning at Destiny Achievers, I learned a lot about the different departments at the Herald House.
As we arrived that Wednesday early morning, we were hosted at the Executives board room where we were told about the history of Zimpapers.
The Herald was started by William Ernest Fairbridge on June 27, 1891.
So since 1891, Zimpapers is still evolving and now has four radio stations and 11 newspaper titles which disseminate information in Zimbabwe and beyond.
l also would like to congratulate Zimpapers with its new television channel which has three studios.
It was a fantastic moment also learning and watching how a television studio looks like as we experienced that at the Zimpapers Television Network (ZTN) studios.
At ZTN, I got to know how they use different screens when shooting shows to be presented on television.
The studio works hand-in-glove with the control room where l was glad to meet the Technical Director who taught us on how programmes are screened on television and a variety of professions which can be employed to work in the control room.
lt was also eye-opening to learn that an archive department within the television station is responsible for storing footage.
Towards lunchtime, we visited the newsroom, where journalists work from.
l also wants to thank Ms (Phillis) Kachere for enlightening us about the Super Desk, which works as a hub for The Herald newsroom.
At this desk, information is converted for different media platforms. For example, content that is meant for radio is also used for television.
l was thankful to meet the other editors who lectured on how their departments operate.
After this long informative tour, we then went to see how the newspaper is printed at the Printing Press Room.
What l thought was totally different from what I experienced.
From there I learned about how information is converted from soft copy to aluminium metal plates and finally the printed newspaper.
l was even startled to know that the machine can print up to 36 000 newspapers per hour.
l thank Engineer Zulu, Senior Artisan Ngena and the rest of their team.
Finally, we visited the Zimpapers Radio House, where Star FM is situated. There we learned how the studio looks like and its operations.
It was a superb and memorable moment when we got to meet popular radio presenter KVG. We were also taught on how news is recorded, read and transmitted to the people on radio.
So much happened I cannot express it all on a sheet of paper.
So to fellow students like me, to be part of the media fraternity you have to be very professional, respectful, disciplined, passionate and principled.
