Kali­fa Clyne

Vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and me­dia prac­ti­tion­er Ken Gor­don be­came teary-eyed and emo­tion­al yes­ter­day as he re­flect­ed on the chal­lenges of his ear­li­er years in jour­nal­ism. Gor­don was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (Costaatt) Ken Gor­don School of Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Stud­ies when, af­ter a long pause, he re­moved his spec­ta­cles and wiped tears from his eyes. The launch took place at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

It was an emo­tion­al and heart­felt mo­ment as Gor­don, who was re­spon­si­ble for the turn­around of the Ex­press news­pa­per from near bank­rupt­cy to the pa­per it is to­day, thanked those who had tak­en that jour­ney with him. "I re­mem­ber say­ing to the staff, gen­tle­men, ladies, this pa­per is bank­rupt and about to be closed down," said Gor­don. In an at­tempt to light­en the mood, Gor­don di­vert­ed from his speech to recog­nise key in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing Chair­man Emer­i­tus of ANSA McAL An­tho­ny Sab­ga. Gor­don de­scribed jour­nal­ism as a de­mand­ing mis­tress and said the sin­gle most im­por­tant role of a jour­nal­ist was to un­cov­er the facts and as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment of a vig­or­ous and well-in­formed pub­lic opin­ion.

Say­ing that press free­dom was alive and vig­or­ous in T&T, Gor­don said the me­dia con­tin­ued to play an im­por­tant part in keep­ing gov­ern­ments on their toes. He said the launch of Costaatt's School of Jour­nal­ism sig­nalled a new se­ri­ous­ness to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of jour­nal­is­tic skills and prac­tices in T&T. He lament­ed that the qual­i­ty of lan­guage had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed and must be cor­rect­ed. Gor­don said a Costaatt grad­u­ate in the elec­tron­ic me­dia should be a stan­dard to which oth­ers as­pire.

Chair­man of Costaatt, Al­lan McKen­zie, said there was a de­mand for train­ing in jour­nal­ism and com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the re­gion and the school's mis­sion would be to lift me­dia stan­dards so that grad­u­ates could cope in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the me­dia in­dus­try. He said Costaatt was hap­py to ho­n­our Ken Gor­don as a Caribbean me­dia icon. "I put you on a pedestal from which no crit­ic can top­ple you, for I have said so," McKen­zie told Gor­don. The Ken Gor­don School of Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies is sit­u­at­ed on Al­cazar Street, St Clair and will be­gin class­es from Jan­u­ary 2012.