Bondan Winarno: Needed Aspect of Investigation in Writing Friday, December 05, 2014
Faculty of Human Ecology (FEMA), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) invites the nationally famous journalist, Bondan Winarno, in one of the students’ practical activities at the Department of Communication and Community Development. The activity open for 100 participants was held at the Senate Meeting Room, Andi Hakim Nasution Building, Dramaga Campus of IPB, Bogor (4/12).
As Dean of FEMA, Dr. Arif Satria said a person becomes a successful writer not because of his talents, but of hard work and constant practice. "My writings are published in various media not because I have a talent of writing. It took me 15 years to publish in a newspaper, which is all because of a strong will. Writing is a good medium for us to express opinions and imagination (in short story)," he said.
According to him, his parents had advised him to be diligent to write because writing is an individual business that can be done at any time. Writing is like learning to swim or ride a bike; no theory, it must be practised.
To improve the writing skills of his students, Dr. Arif invited the well-known senior journalist in the Kompas Daily’s column ‘Jalan Sutera’ (Silk Road), Bondan Winarno, the writer who has been successful in pushing the development of culinary tourism in Indonesia with his famous slogan, ‘Mak nyus’.
In his presentation entitled Investigative Journalism, Mr Bondan criticizes Indonesian citizen journalism which in his view has gone too much. "All writings, especially those to publish, must follow the rules of journalism. In freedom there is responsibility. It disappears when it is labeled as needing creativity only. Talent is important but not everything; 1% talent is enough and the remaining is sweating or hard work," he said.
"Why does my writing about culinary become popular? There used to be a talented young journalist who had worked not very long told me that writing culinary is a trivial thing – inappropriate for me, a chief editor. I told him, okay I’ll stop but on condition that you replace me tomorrow," he said. It turned out that the young journalist could not do it. In fact in culinary writing there is the factor of investigation that cannot be underestimated.
"In it there is the element of investigation. Although it is simple, with no onvestigation, the resulted writing is empty, no content." he said.
In writing, if the material is limited, we probably would not write well. In any case we need to enrich the material to write. Our writing will definitely be different.
News presentation is actually exactly the same as the process and the rules of reporting in general, but different from investigative journalism in which journalists deal with news sources that always try to stay away or are unwilling to disclose anything, even try by all means to stop the process of investigation. In fact, there is a considerable threat to journalists, he explained. (Mtd)
