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Documentary Filmmaker Philip Ashon has advised Ghanaian journalists to learn how to use videos to tell their stories.

He said this at the ‘Nature Crimes in Ghana’ workshop held at the Labadi Beach Hotel, Accra.

Speaking to Class News’ Prince Benjamin on the importance of harnessing the power of the visual in reports, Ashon opined, “I think we’ve gotten to a point in our history, in terms of news and content consumption, where the visual seems to be leading the conversation and so the power that the written word had in twenty, thirty, forty years ago is slowly being redefined in terms of the visual content and having the capability to be able to capture and tell stories using the visual medium has become a very important tool that every journalist should have.”

“Whether you’re a broadcast journalist or print, or whichever, I think that you should have a certain basic knowledge of how to capture video material and how to use visual content to tell stories. Obviously when you look at the numbers in terms of video content consumption on your YouTubes and all these other platforms it’s very very clear that video is the future,” he stressed.

Philip Ashon was the coordinator for the three-day workshop organised by the United States Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America radio network with support from the US Embassy in Ghana.

He urged journalists to mind the quality of the videos they share in the line of duty “understanding the essence of the tenets of journalism and using that to tell your stories. I think that is where journalists need to start reorienting their minds, if they haven’t already.”

Speaking on the challenges journalists face in terms of funding, he added, “It’s great that some of these [online video] platforms provide funding as well and so once you create your own audience, you’re able to channel your content and then make some money off it. I just think that platforms today that offer us the opportunity and ability to share our content and be paid for it, are very important things to consider.”

Meanwhile, the Assisting News Editor of Kumasi-based Luv FM and a participant at the workshop, Erastus Asare Donkor, shared his takeaway, “I’ve been reporting environmental issues for close to fifteen years. My attention was not drawn to what we call nature crimes and in fact though I knew some things people do to the environment constitute illegalities, it did not occur to me that I could look [closely] at nature crimes.

"This workshop, three days of it, has been able to highlight that part of my work on the environment and it’s really taught me how to identify nature crimes, and how to report them including how to even pitch the stories and to be able to design it in such a way that when I go on the field, I’ll be able to work effectively, be able to identify the key areas, and use proper technologies and be able to do stories that will impact positively on the environment. I have benefited from this workshop a lot and I know that going forward, it’ll help me in the reporting of nature crimes and my work in general.”