A former international award-winning journalist and media lecturer, Esther A. Armah says the country’s media fraternity needs to shift focus towards community media.

According to her, this would help in understanding the needs of the various communities and to help them understand things happening around them.

Based on this, indigenes can also make decisions to transform their lives for the better.

Madam Armah lamented that the Ghanaian media space should not focus on conforming to the standards of names, especially from the Western world, saying that Ghana’s media needs to understand the uniqueness of the country’s situation.

Students of the media must be trained to use whatever they have and not be bent on having sophisticated equipment to do their best in practicing journalism, she said.

“If you were in a village, will you use all those things? You cannot. So in Ghana, I need to teach the students to use what they have, do what they can for the community that they are serving. So what does that mean – that our future is not trying to be some global stratospheric go-to-space kind of media.

“It is to look at the nation in which we live, sixteen regions strong and explore the power of community media and what the community needs in order that they are informed about what is happening in their specific area and that that information enables them to make the kinds of decisions that transform their lives for the better,” she said on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday.

According to the former international award-winning journalist, the media’s competition is not and has never been the big names, saying that “we compare ourselves to things that make no sense for the market that we have.”

Madam Armah has also expressed worry over what seems a disregard for people in the local communities when it comes to information gathering.

She argued that although people may not have certificates to warrant their expertise, some have lived through regimes long enough to be able to act as resource personnel when there is the need for certain information.

Local community media is the future that journalists do not think they need yet it stands to be pivotal when it comes to “transforming our industry in a way that is powerful,” she added.