Lockdown or no lockdown, we want/need vigorous growth of the new PH Agriculture under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie – so we need new dedicated media heroes! Born today, our National Hero Jose Rizal was dedicated to agriculture – read my earlier essay, “Jose Rizal – We Forgot That He Lived A Farmer’s Life. And He Was Extraordinary[1]” (19 June 2020, THiNK Journalism).
For relevance, let us consider two kinds of journalist stories in media:
(1) Unique Entrepreneurship: Coming out with successful single-farmer-family relevant features or stories (current practice).
(2) Inspiring Entrepreneurship: Publishing multiple-farmer-family relevant features or stories (my proposal).
(1) Unique Entrepreneurship
In agriculture especially, in truth and in fact, unique entrepreneur stories are what prevail today. These are success stories that uplift the spirit – if you the farmer happens to have resources and circumstances similar to the one whose story is being told. This has been in vogue for the last 60 years in the Philippines; this is relevant to the people in those stories, as well as to their families – but irrelevant to a national campaign to invigorate PH agriculture especially for the poor farmers. Those single stories flaunt the success of the individuals, unfortunately not useful as guides to others because circumstances are dissimilar. (Ir/relevant image from Fred Thomson, One Rabbit[2])
(2) Inspiring Entrepreneurship
There is noneof this kind! We need stories that are more relevant to more farmers and their families, stories that encourage many in many places simultaneously.
“We believe in global scalability with local relevance[3],” says Gillian Tans, highly successful Dutch businesswoman (Wikipedia). Already, Manong Willie has come up with a complete package with national scalability and points to local relevances, plural – with his “The New Thinking For Agriculture” and its composite 8 paradigms (for these, see my essay cited above).
As I point out in the image above; “Enterprising Journalism: Stories relevant to the prosperity of thousands of PH farm families.” Your journalism must inspire thousands of families!
To help invigorate PH agriculture, I am hereby inspiring science writers to come up with rich nationally & locally applicable stories – those farmers can relate to and learn. I am referring to multipliable success stories. With those, science writers can help tremendously propel Philippine agriculture into a decade of prosperity for millions.
Let us call it Enterprising Journalism, where enterprising refers to both journalist and farmer. This is where journalists write stories of farmers succeeding in increasing their incomes – and sustaining such – assisted by the Department of Agriculture, DA, under The New Philippine Agriculture brought about by the leadership of Manong Willie – with each of those successes being replicable anywhere in the Philippines!
I hope to convince Manong Willie to sponsor an annual Enterprising Awards, different from the Binhi Awards. The Enterprising Awards are about successful farmers whose problematic circumstances proved solvable, thereby to encourage other farmers.
We need media heroes just as we need farmer heroes!@517
[1]https://ithinkjournalism.blogspot.com/2020/06/jose-rizal-we-forgot-that-he-lived.html
[2]https://www.onerabbit.com.au/blog/2016/02/why-being-irrelevant-today-is-more-relevant-than-its-ever-been/
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Tans
No comments:
Post a Comment