By Anamika Ragu (23A01A), Chairperson
To inform effectively is the journalist’s bread and butter. However, such an undertaking is constantly in formation, especially in the use of form.
Breaking this down further, let us look back on the past half-decade. International instability and a global pandemic had the world growing more introspective by foregrounding personal stories, while simultaneously making it imperative to have a greater awareness of international crises. Not only that, the recent surge in short-form video content and discourse over a species-wide fall in attention span have forced news to find more stable foundations than quiet walls of text on paper.
What this means is that today’s student journalist must take on multimedia, not just in what we do, but how we think. Hitting the pulse of our stories entails having a deep, sustained awareness of what matters to our peers, and demands leveraging the right platforms to connect with them. Only then can a student press effectively be the heartbeat of the school.
For Cross-Island Impressions and Pressing Ahead this year, participants are tasked to explore what they think student journalists should write about through exploring visual forms of news presentation— videos and photojournalistic hybrids. Ultimately, the 2023 edition of Cross Island Impressions aims to sharpen a sense of what is worthy to inform and how best to do so, and we have found that journalism is a dynamic, evolving dialogue between writers and readers.
As such, the theme for CII 2023 is: “In/form/ation: Hitting the Pulse in Student Journalism”. On behalf of Raffles Press, I hope you enjoy reading (and watching) Cross Island Impressions Issue 5!
Last but not least, special thanks to the other student journalism societies we partnered with to make CII 2023 possible: DHS Publications (DHS), The Origin (EJC), Hwa Chong Publications Society (HCI), Editorial Wing (National Junior College), NUS High Press (NUSH), The Raffles Gazette (RGS), and The Victorian Press (VJC).
