The maiden edition of the Nepal Media Festival is kicking off this week. The event will take place at Bhandarkhal Garden in the premises of Patan Durbar Square starting January 6.  The fest will feature noted media personalities, journalism experts, and representatives from different media houses and media organisations.

The fest will see discussions on the current discourse of journalism and media, and more importantly, issues pertaining to an inclusive journalism, said Srikrishna Maharjan, chairperson of the organisers Newa: Patrakar Rastriya Dabu.  Speaking at a press meet organised to announce the fest, Maharjan said, “This is a novel attempt aimed at discourses ongoing in Nepali media fraternity.”

Co-ordinator of the fest, Surendra Bhakta Shrestha, said that the main motive of the festival is to call to attention the issue that media should be inclusive. “We should not play the game of negation and instead entertain all kinds of ideas and thoughts,” Shrestha added.

The festival will be inaugurated by cultural expert Satya Mohan Joshi, who is known among other things for starting a Nepal-bhasa journal Kalakar, in 1952.

The second session of the fest will host discussion on the current state of journalism in various indigenous languages, which according to organisers is all the more relevant as the country has adopted federalism.

The next session will see columnist CK Lal, and journalists Yubaraj Ghimire and Suresh Kiran Manandhar come together to discuss the concept of inclusive journalism in the context of new Nepal. The fest will host a about three dozen stalls featuring newspapers and journals published in various mother tongues, a number of now-defunct journals, and television and FM stations.

The fest will also see the release of a bulletin featuring biographies of the early practitioners of Nepal-bhasa journalism.