Nghe An Newspaper rises to be worthy of the title of Labor Hero in the renovation period

(Baonghean) - Overcoming difficulties in many aspects, with the attention of the province and with the great efforts of the collective of cadres, reporters and employees over the years, Nghe An Newspaper has made a breakthrough in the quality and effectiveness of propaganda, excellently fulfilling the role and task of being the voice of the Party Committee, government and people of the province, and was honored to be awarded the title of Heroic Labor Unit in the period of innovation...

The Editor-in-Chief with reporters who won the 2014 Journalism Award. Photo: Tran Hai

In a recent assessment of the performance of the national press system, the Central Propaganda Department stated: "Currently, Nghe An Newspaper is one of the few units in the national press system that has organized a good emulation movement with quality and efficiency". The outstanding practical movements of Nghe An Newspaper in the recent period show that the emulation and reward work has always been focused on by the Party Committee and the Editorial Board, considering it as a driving force to improve the quality of press publications, and build a strong and comprehensive Party organization and agency.

Reporters of Nghe An Newspaper working in Truong Sa. Photo: Cong Sang

Every year, in addition to thoroughly grasping the documents, directives and laws on emulation and rewards of the Party and State to cadres, reporters and employees, Nghe An Newspaper has built and effectively implemented many emulation movements, typically the movements "Good articles, beautiful newspaper pages", "Labor, creativity, building a comprehensively strong agency", the movement "Building a team of loyal, creative, dedicated and exemplary cadres and civil servants", the movement "Green, clean, beautiful"; "Applying and mastering science and technology", "practicing thrift, fighting waste"... Along with launching, to create the spread of each movement, Nghe An Newspaper has built and strictly implemented a mechanism for evaluating, monitoring and supervising openly and democratically. Every week, it organizes voting to award good news, articles, beautiful newspaper pages, good work; every month, each person and each professional department self-evaluates and classifies workers and submits them to the Editorial Board for approval; Every year, the work of honoring emulation titles is carried out with quality. Individuals with outstanding achievements, in addition to timely commendation and rewards, are also organized to visit and study domestically and abroad. From 2011 to 2015, nearly 50 cadres and reporters with outstanding achievements in emulation movements were awarded study tours in the following countries: Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, China. In addition, the assessment, review, and handling of violations by cadres, reporters, and employees are strictly implemented, closely following the level of violation to remove them from the payroll, reduce the duration of labor contracts, and in some cases, dismiss them from management positions. This not only tightens discipline and administrative discipline in the agency but also motivates cadres, reporters, and employees to overcome stagnation, constantly practice, study, and work with a serious and responsible attitude, promoting their dedication to building an increasingly strong agency.

The atmosphere of creative labor competition and agency building at Nghe An Newspaper is spread from the leader to the core team and from there creates a common vibrant routine of the whole collective. First of all, the Editor-in-Chief always shows the role of "commander" of the newspaper, saying goes hand in hand with doing, quickly gathering the collective's intelligence and enthusiasm, exploiting the strengths of each person, successfully implementing many good ideas, improving the quality of management and operation, building a team of cadres and reporters with courage, responsibility, expertise, ready to devote themselves to the profession, for innovation, improving the quality of the provincial party newspaper, contributing to the common goal of excellently completing political tasks.

What many colleagues of provincial party newspapers across the country recognize about the remarkable progress of Nghe An Newspaper in the recent period is that from a team that has not really had good access to information technology, it has been quickly trained and practiced to now basically have professional journalism skills to serve the implementation process of the "Convergence Newsroom" Project with 100% of staff and reporters having university degrees, of which 30% have 2 university degrees, ensuring mastery of modern journalism technology chains; 100% of reporters are proficient in their work, completing news products, articles, photos, video clips and transferring them to the electronic system; editing and presenting printed newspapers on computers; reviewing the content of newspaper issues on the electronic network; applying technology to send files, convert PDFs to print newspapers; digitizing the system, storage process, securing documents, materials, outgoing and incoming dispatches. With this new process, it saves time, human resources, costs, has high security, and promptly meets readers' information needs.

In particular, in recent years, especially from 2011 to present, Nghe An Newspaper has been one of the leading newspapers in innovating its form, increasing pages and numbers. Currently, Nghe An Newspaper is the only local party newspaper that publishes an 8-page large-format daily newspaper and has a special international news page, with 2 pages on Party building each week. The propaganda content has made a breakthrough, creating a deep impression, overcoming the situation of "being healthy but not strong". In addition to promptly updating information on political and social events, the Newspaper has confidently addressed hot issues that readers and people are interested in to investigate, reflect, and propagate, contributing to solving hot, complicated, difficult and entangled issues; bravely fighting to promptly prevent plots to sabotage revolutionary achievements and divide the great national unity bloc of hostile forces; negative behaviors, corruption, and intentional violations of a number of cadres and party members, strengthening discipline and law, creating stability in social security and order through many topics and articles that leave a deep impression.

Typical investigative report series "Finding martyrs' graves by spiritual methods" (2011), "Journey to find the truth of Hoang Thien Long's heresy" (2013) exposed the fraudulent tricks of those who take advantage of people's trust and faith to do illegal business, quickly eliminated illegal centers to find martyrs' graves that sprung up like mushrooms in the districts of Nam Dan, Thanh Chuong, Hung Nguyen and Vinh City, making millions of people in Nghe An and other localities across the country vigilant, avoiding the fraudulent tricks of calling spirits to find graves, giving up following strange religions...

Or like the long-term topic "Looking back at the trial of the case of overthrowing the people's government", the articles pointed out the ambiguity, gullibility, and misdirection of Ho Van Hoa and his accomplices; exposed the sinister plots and tricks of reactionary forces, traitorous, negative, and dissatisfied elements living in exile abroad who are always looking for ways to sabotage our Party and State. From there, we can influence the subjects and help the people to always be vigilant, unite to fight against all "peaceful evolution" plots of hostile forces; fiercely fight against the hostile thoughts of bad guys, propaganda distorting the Party and State's guidelines and policies, contributing to ensuring stability of security and social order in the area throughout the time before, during and after the trial of the case.

Or the special topic "Around the case of law violations in Nghi Phuong" - a series of articles that resonated throughout the country, clearly pointed out the acts of law violations, violations of civic duties of a number of Catholic dignitaries and officials; refuted the distortion of the truth, slander against the government of a number of reactionary media, contributed to eliminating dangerous and complicated hot spots, creating solidarity between Catholics and non-Catholics, stabilizing social order in the area, was highly appreciated by the Party Committee, government, and people, and won the A prize of the National Press Award in 2013.

In the socio-economic field, the newspaper has organized many in-depth topics with good effects such as: "Industrialization of rural agriculture: Need to have appropriate steps and roadmap", "Nghe An Industry - Advantages to be exploited", "Concentrated dairy cow processing project: Ensuring land fund for raw material areas", "5 years of implementing Resolution 30a", "Regarding the issue of overcoming and handling the environment of Saigon - Nghe Tinh Brewery"; Topic "Looking back at the implementation of the goals of the Provincial Party Congress Resolution on rubber tree development"; "From green pastures to clean glasses of milk"; "Regarding the incident of children in Van Ha village not being able to go to school" ... contributing to helping the province and localities overcome difficulties, improve the quality and effectiveness of management and administration of socio-economic development, build and strengthen people's trust in Party committees and authorities.

Not only "embracing the good, eliminating the bad", Nghe An Newspaper also does a good job of advising local Party committees and authorities to promptly resolve and relieve pressing problems in people's lives; suggesting directions for socio-economic development of the province. Typically, in early 2014, in the context of the work of clearing National Highway 1A facing many difficulties and congestion that seemed to have to stop, Nghe An Newspaper urgently took action to produce a series of reports titled "Clearing National Highway 1A for the national interest" promptly reflecting good examples; suggesting solutions and ways of doing things, helping Party committees and authorities to resolve difficulties, creating consensus among tens of thousands of affected households. The series of articles contributed to helping Nghe An province clear the land on schedule and was commended by the Ministry of Transport, and awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Provincial People's Committee.

The newspaper's activities have also made a deep impression, from a 3-issue/weekly, 4-page/issue newspaper, it has now developed into an 8-page/issue daily newspaper. In addition to the daily newspaper, there are 3 publications: Weekend, Mountainous Ethnic Special Page, Nghe An Electronic Newspaper with modern utilities with many attractive, rich, and diverse columns that increasingly attract a large number of readers and are important documents in party activities, with a high growth in circulation. Although facing the development trend of online newspapers, many domestic and international printed newspapers are sharply reducing their circulation, Nghe An Newspaper is the only printed newspaper in the national press system that has not reduced its circulation but has increased rapidly. In 2010, the daily newspaper published approximately 10,000 copies/issue, by the second quarter of 2015 it reached 16,300 copies/issue (an increase of 6,500 copies/issue). Nghe An Weekend Newspaper, in 2010, had approximately 9,000 copies/issue, now reaching over 16,000 copies/issue (an increase of over 7,000 copies/issue). Nghe An electronic newspaper has been around since 2008, but has attracted more and more readers. On average, there are 50 - 60 thousand visitors per day, ranking as the electronic page of the local party newspaper with the highest number of visitors.

Nghe An Newspaper is also a pioneer in building a cultural and healthy office environment. In 2012, it was recognized by the Provincial Labor Federation as a "Cultural Standard Unit"; it has well implemented the policy of partial financial autonomy according to Decree 43/CP, contributing an average of 1 - 1.3 billion VND to the budget each year, creating an environment for everyone to work according to their capacity and receive benefits according to their work with an average income of 15 - 20 million VND/person/month. At the same time, it is a pioneer in the press system, participating in charity and humanitarian activities, taking care of 4 Vietnamese Heroic Mothers, many poor students who have overcome difficulties to study well, and Nghe An Newspaper is also the only newspaper in the press system nationwide to organize the traditional Youth - Children's Football Tournament for the past 19 consecutive years; Since then, many talents have been discovered, nurtured and supplemented for the provincial and domestic sports, such as: Van Quyen, Cong Vinh, Hong Son, Trong Hoang, Hoang Thinh, Cong Phuong, ...

To better serve the information needs of readers, the leadership of the Party, and the management of the State in the period of integration and development, Nghe An Newspaper is focusing on implementing the Project to build a Converged Newsroom to promote the combined strength of human resources, taking advantage of the superiority of multimedia information technology to "take shortcuts and anticipate" modern journalism trends. With the Converged Newsroom, Nghe An Newspaper will be able to provide multimedia communication products to readers quickly, accurately, attractively and vividly, contributing to better fulfilling the role of "conductor" in orienting public opinion in the area, worthy of the trust of the Party Committee, government and people of the province.

Van Lam