{"id":55830,"date":"2013-04-15T06:20:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T06:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=55830"},"modified":"2013-04-15T06:20:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T06:20:24","slug":"amid-old-problems-brand-new-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=55830","title":{"rendered":"Amid Old Problems\u2026 Brand-new President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), now has a brand-new president, Kelvin Lewis. He was elected overwhelmingly on Saturday, April 13<sup>th<\/sup> at the Miatta Conference Hall, Yuoyi Building, Brookfields, Freetown, during the association\u2019s biennial conference.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Kelvin Lewis won with a landslide of 170 votes, soundly defeating Mustapha Sesay and Williette James who pulled 31 and 70 votes respectively.\u00a0 This year\u2019s national executive elections were free and fair.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The new SLAJ President is the Proprietor and Managing Editor of Sierra Leone newspaper AWOKO. His election is widely viewed as a fulfillment of the dream of most journalists who regard him as a classical example of a successful journalist whose contribution to journalism is noteworthy. Kelvin Lewis has succeeded BBC\u2019s Umaru Fofana.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">However, Mr. Lewis has inherited a politicized, fragmented, polluted and highly criticized association, the name of which has been stained by the blatant unprofessionalism exhibited by quacks dressed in the borrowed robe of journalism.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Kelvin Lewis was elected just after the Society for Democratic Initiatives (SDI) release of the damning &#8216;State of The Media Report, 2012&#8217; in which the association was severely lambasted for the political divide and unprofessionalism some of its members displayed last year, especially during the 2012 elections. The new president is, therefore, faced with the immediate assignment of redeeming the association\u2019s name and reunifying members.<\/p>\n<p><i>By Joseph Milton Lebbie<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<hr align=\"center\" size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), now has a brand-new president, Kelvin Lewis. He was elected overwhelmingly on Saturday, April 13th at the Miatta [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":55733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[671,673],"tags":[15522,708,7409,1781],"class_list":["post-55830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-national-news","tag-kelvin-lewis","tag-slaj","tag-slaj-president","tag-umaru-fofana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}