Photojournalism as a Core Journalism Course Unit: Challenges and Solutions. A Survey of Some Universities in Rwanda

Photography in journalism plays a big role in society as the art and science of a universal means of communication. Most scholars attributed photography communication as the best archive for all aspects of history and news stories. Although its crucial in journalism, photography is mostly mistaken to be not a professional course. At University level, photography is not given adequate time by students during their studies which results to many journalism students graduating without the practical knowledge and skills of using scarce digital professional still photo cameras and new editing software in the country. Using the available data and documentations, this paper analyzes the policy of photography being a compulsory unit among colleges of journalism to all students. It has been recommended that photography be granted a compulsory practical status to all students training journalism at University from diploma, degree and master levels. The last section of this article suggests several paradigms of the learning and teaching of photography for journalism