THERE WILL BE INK - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

Dean Biakolo pointed out that most training is supported and funded by media houses, which in hismind shows a commitment to and investment in their journalists. The prospect of receiving training,he thinks, should provide more incentive for journalists to stay in journalism. Biakolo believes thatthere will be journalists who leave the profession after training, but that overall, business journalismshould improve as a result of training. 98There is one important caveat about these findings on journalists leaving the profession as a resultof training. While training itself did not appear to cause flight from journalism to other professionswithin our sample, it is possible that our sample is slightly skewed. Our team spoke primarily withjournalists who are still in the industry, or who had returned, but with only a few journalists who hadleft and had not returned. We drew our sample from training lists of organizations that hadconducted trainings, and from people who are current journalists. Those training lists almost entirelycontained current journalists, and furthermore, current journalists connected us primarily to fellowjournalists within their media outlets. People who are no longer journalists during our research weremuch harder to locate. Therefore, it is certainly possible that a larger sample size of formerjournalists would produce results suggesting that training could promote “brain drain.” However,the journalists our researchers spoke with were emphatic that fewer journalists are leaving theindustry, and that more are returning, because pay is increasing and people are starting to think ofjournalism as a career. Moreover, training is having the effect of raising pay in the industry, andincreasing the perception of journalism as a career.98 Emevmo Biakolo. 2009. Interview by Ben Colmery. Lagos, Nigeria, January 14.– 32 –