I am spending my first full morning at Voice of Maldives and the morning meeting shows a lot of improvement. There is discussion of actual news stories and ways to make them more interesting. The president has a “grip and grin” public event and they will cover it just to make sure he doesn’t say anything newsworthy.
Like TVM, radio is also advertising for people who want to become full time journalists and they have a lot of openings. Also like TVM, the salaries are fixed by the government. Top pay for an editor with a university education, with all possible bonuses, tops out at 9,000, or under $800 a month. There are vacancies for an editor, an assistant editor, seven reporters in Male and eight reporters in the atoll bureaus. They also need to fill a clerical position called archivist. VOM will be attending a job fair later this month to recruit, but we’re recommending that they run a public service announcement in Dhiveli and English to advertise for people interested to send in their resumes. That way they can also reach out to the islands.
Radio has another problem: technical difficulties. The bill for the BBC feed wasn’t paid, so it is cut off at the moment. There is also a plan to bring over the Reuters feed from TVM so that radio reporters can use the audio, but the line isn’t working. There are some sharp IT people at both stations who should be able to figure this out!