June 14, 2005

NEWS: MALAYSIA: ST Media Club sends 11 students on three-day trip to KL

MALAYSIA: ST Media Club sends 11 students on three-day trip to KL

Budding journalists from Straits Times Media Club visit major Malaysian newspapers and interact with media club members

The Straits Times
Tuesday, June 14, 2005

By Liaw Wy-Cin

Eleven students from six secondary schools, all members of The Straits Times (ST) Media Club, left Singapore yesterday to meet their counterparts in Kuala Lumpur.

The three-day visit is the first overseas youth exchange programme organised for the club by The Straits Times.

The students, ranging from Secondary 2 to 5, will meet the management, editors and journalists of Malaysia's top two English dailies: The Star and the New Straits Times. They will also get to see the newspaper production room in action and visit a local secondary school.

However, the highlight of the trip for these students, who are mainly the editors and presidents of their school newsletters or media clubs, will be meeting the two newspapers' own youth media clubs.

"I'm excited to see how youths in other countries run their media clubs and how we can learn from them," said 15-year-old Desmond Chew. The Secondary 4 student from Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road) will give a presentation on IN, The Straits Times' youth paper. Desmond is president of the IN Crowd, The Straits Times' student advisory panel for IN.

IN is a weekly supplement distributed free to schools that subscribe to more than 500 copies of The Straits Times. Subscribing schools also get free membership of the ST Media Club, which organises monthly talks, biannual camps and press conferences to help students hone their skills as budding journalists and photographers.

As the first members of the club to embark on an overseas youth exchange programme, they were clearly excited. Daniel Low, 17, a Secondary 5 student from Peicai Secondary, said: "I want to foster ties with the Malaysian side. We have a lot to learn from them and they have a lot to learn from us too."

Sixteen-year-old Rajesh Misir, a Secondary 4 student from Montfort Secondary, sees the trip as an opportunity "to learn how to reach out to other students through the newspaper, so they can do the same for others".

The editor of The Straits Times, Mr Han Fook Kwang, said: "Journalism broadens the mind and so does travel, so I hope they'll benefit doubly from the trip. We want to make being a member of the Media Club an enriching experience."

Date Posted: 6/14/2005

SOURCE: http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=25687

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