Writing features in the internet and mobile phone-less 90s was a whole different ball game with information sourcing solely dependent on on-spot visits, interactions with people and following trails, said Shahnaz Munni, chief news editor at television channel News24.
Speaking at an interactive session on Bangla non-fiction with Brac University (BracU) students, she described how she created her first feature on Baldha Garden in Wari of Old Dhaka with no prior knowledge of it.
The second was on a banyan in the University of Dhaka, created in a similar manner before she left the media outlet for not paying her salaries.
After some stints here and there she got a job at Ekushey Television on its launch in 1999 when she learned of ways on integrating videos with news reports from two BBC journalists. Besides she observed news reports of BBC and CNN.
Munni said non-fictions such as political commentary, historic incidents and travel stories all need to be based on factual information, meaning the truth, while event reports on objectivity.
The interactive session was a part of a creative writing workshop titled CAFÉ COMPOSE organised under Resonance, a bilingual journal of the Department of English and Humanities.
Organised on 28 November, 2019, the workshop included an English poetry session with Seema Nusrat Amin and a bilingual fiction session with Mohammod Mahmudul Haque, both teachers of the department.