The first specialized seminar on news websites will be launched on Tuesday morning. The seminar is organized by Al Masar Electronic Newspaper and will discuss the future of journalism in amid the rapid digital developments and the changes of local, regional and international situation.

The seminar is to be held under the patronage of Mr. Yousef Abdulkarim Al Hoti the media professional, at City Seasons Hotel Muscat. A number of media speakers will participate in the seminar, among them: Ahmed Omar Managing Editor of Al Roya daily newspaper, Ahlam Saeed Al Hatmi Managing Editor of Al Masar newspaper, Moza Suliman Al Khatriyeh, a journalist and the representative of Al Wesal Radio news websit, as well as Dr. Khalifa Saif Al Hinai ,who will participate in the legal theme as an attorney. The discussion sessions will be moderated by Khalfan Al Amri, the media professional.

Ali Saleh Al Ajmi, founder and Editor-In-Chief of Al-Masar electronic newspaper, and head of the organizing committee of the seminar, shed light on the importance of the seminar on news sites. One of the top motives to organize the seminar is the difficulties facing digital journalism, especially the difficulty of obtaining advertisements, as it is the main source of revenue for media organizations.

He also added that despite the tendency of big companies, banks and other institutions to use the digital advertising, unfortunately the vast majority of these advertisements are paid to destinations outside the Sultanate, such as facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Consequently no in-country value achieved.

Al-Ajmi attributes this situation of advertising market to the advertiser's desire to appear on social media platforms more than local news websites. At the same time, these platforms attract their users by presenting the content of the digital news, which is provided already by the news sites.

The seminar entitled “New Websites: Professional challenges and Funding Difficulties” will illustrate the challenges faced by the digital media and the challenges of obtaining information from reliable sources in a timely manner. Moreover, it will focus also on the difficulty of providing the necessary financial resources to manage and ensure the continuity of media projects. These sites suffer from the lack of advertisements, which is the main source of income for any media. The global advertising giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are taking over the advertisements market and they are putting these sites in a critical challenge to manage their costs.

The seminar seeks to highlight a number of aspects of digital journalism work and the professional challenges facing the employees working in this field.

A number of those employees in websites did not receive specialized journalism training in press and media institutions, many of whom head to the digital press immediately after graduation, which make them facing the challenge of professionalism and how to adhere to the standards of journalism.

Al-Ajmi hopes that the seminar will come up with a set of recommendations that contribute to the development of news sites in the sense that the press, and the media in general, is one of the pillars of the blessed renaissance march, which is led by the wisdom of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said.

The seminar includes four main themes; the first entitled “The Management of Websites", discusses the tools of managing of websites and the administrative structure of it. The second theme discusses the “Credibility of Digital News”, which includes the level of public confidence in news published through websites this theme focuses on highlighting the difference between the websites of the printed newspapers, independent news websites and individual accounts (influencers) that publish news.

The third theme, entitled "Mechanisms to counter the false, fake and wrong news" and it reviews the difference between these types of news, and mechanisms for the use of modern technologies, such as infographic, videographic, interactive videos, audio news messages and others, as tools capable of facing the false news. The fourth and final theme deals with the legal acts governing the publishing process, especially the publication of rumors or false news that lacks a reliable source.

Al Masar seminar is held under the sponsorship of the United Securities LLC, and Rawaj Communications & Marketing Agency as the marketing sponsor of the event.

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