Harare — ARTS journalists require continued training to equip them with the latest international trends in arts reporting, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) president Matthew Takaona said in his opening remarks at the Hifa Media Training Programme on Monday.

"The media training programme is a welcome development considering that there has not been any arts and culture media training programme here in the last decade," Takaona said.

Takaona hailed the media training programme for arts and culture journalists saying it was long overdue.

"I think ZUJ has failed to come up with strong ideas on training due to the absence of arts journalists in our executive. However, I am happy that you (Arts Initiates) have come up with the programme and hope that you will make the training an annual event."

National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) director Titus Chipangura, who was among the guests of honour, said his organisation was planning a similar media retreat for arts and culture journalists.

"The negative attitude that we have about arts and culture journalists, has been very worrying of late. Because of this we have decided to work on an annual programme that is more of a media retreat where we will meet together with arts journalists and artistes from the region or even internationally, to share ideas on the arts."

Ten journalists from the print and electronic media are attending the training programme organised by Arts Initiates in conjunction with Hifa.