Liton Hossain Jihad

শহর আমাদের বেঁচে থাকতে শেখায়, কিন্তু কখনো কখনো বেঁচে থাকার অনুভূতিটাই কেড়ে নেয়। প্রতিদিন একই ঘড়ির কাঁটা, একই রাস্তা, একই কংক্রিটের দেয়াল, একই ব্যস্ত মুখের ভিড়। চারদিকে এত মানুষ, অথচ মানুষের জন্য মানুষের সময় ক্রমশ কমে আসে। জীবনটা আজকাল ফরমালিনে ডুবিয়ে রাখা কোনো ফলের মতো হয়ে গেছে, দেখতে সতেজ, ভেতরে স্বাদহীন।

এমন এক যান্ত্রিক জীবন থেকে হঠাৎ একদিন মুক্তির ডাক এল তিতাসের কাছ থেকে। কবি শাহ মোহাম্মদ সানাউল হকের আন্তরিক আমন্ত্রণে সেই ডাকেই সাড়া দিলাম। মনে হলো, বহুদিন পর কেউ শহরের বদ্ধ জানালাটা খুলে দিয়ে বললেন, চলো, আজ কিছুক্ষণ নদীর কাছে বসি; দেখি জল এখনো মানুষের ক্লান্তি বুঝতে পারে কি না।

Publishing news on Facebook, connecting with colleagues on another platform, searching for jobs elsewhere, taking courses on a separate website, and using yet another service to build a professional portfolio. For journalists in the digital age, everyday work often means moving between a growing number of platforms.

PothikTV.com is being developed to bring these scattered experiences together. Its ambition extends beyond news publishing: it aims to become an integrated digital community and professional ecosystem for journalists, writers, media professionals, students, and others connected to the media industry.

### A Familiar Social Experience, Built Around Journalism

On PothikTV, users will be able to create profiles, follow others, publish posts and updates, and connect through likes, comments, and shares.
But the vision goes further.
While general social media platforms tend to place a wide range of content within the same publishing structure, PothikTV is developing distinct post formats suited to journalism and public-interest communication. These include Updates, News Leads, Help Requests, Events, and Civic Polls.

This means journalists will be able to do more than share their published work. They will also be able to exchange story leads, seek assistance, announce relevant events, and gather public opinion.

A Journalist’s Profile as a Digital Professional Identity

Over the course of a career, a journalist may produce hundreds of reports. Yet as they move between organisations, their work often becomes scattered across websites and social media accounts.

PothikTV aims to bring that fragmented professional identity into one place.

User profiles are intended to showcase published work, professional activities, background information, and other relevant details. This could help emerging journalists build a digital portfolio while giving experienced professionals a more organised way to present their careers and contributions.

Newsroom: A Dedicated Workspace for Journalism

Newsroom is a central part of the PothikTV ecosystem.

It is being designed to bring story preparation, news leads, reporting beats, coverage areas, photo and video attachments, editing, and editorial review into a shared digital workflow.

The goal is to make the stages of news production easier to manage, connecting the work of field reporters with that of editors.

AI as an Assistant to Journalists

Artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in digital journalism. PothikTV also plans to introduce a range of AI tools to support everyday editorial work.

These tools are intended to assist with drafting stories, suggesting headlines, correcting spelling and language, summarising and translating text, writing photo captions and social media copy, generating hashtags, supporting search engine optimisation, preparing interview questions, and turning press releases into news drafts.

The guiding principle is clear: AI should support journalists, not replace them.

Under the proposed approach, AI-generated information would not automatically be labelled “Verified,” “Confirmed,” or “Fact Checked.” Final editorial decisions would remain in human hands.

Verify: A Dedicated Space for Fact-Checking

An image, video, or claim can reach thousands of people online within moments. It can influence public opinion before anyone has established whether it is accurate.

To address this challenge, PothikTV plans to develop Verify, a dedicated system for fact-checking and information verification.

Users will be able to submit questionable content for review. Technology and AI may assist with preliminary analysis, while human editorial review is intended to remain a requirement before findings are published.

Learn: Opportunities to Build Skills

Connecting journalists is only one part of strengthening journalism. Access to training and professional development matters too.

That is why Learn is being introduced as part of the PothikTV ecosystem.

The section is intended to host courses and training in journalism, technology, English, digital media, content creation, and other relevant subjects. Users will be able to choose learning opportunities that match their needs.

For students and early-career journalists, this could mean being able to learn, publish their work, and connect with experienced professionals within the same platform.

Work: Connecting Skills with Opportunities

The nature of work in digital media is changing. Alongside full-time employment, professionals increasingly take on freelance assignments in reporting, video production, editing, translation, design, research, and content creation.

PothikTV’s Work section is being planned as a space to connect users with these professional opportunities.

The platform therefore aims to highlight more than what a person publishes. It also seeks to show what they know, what they are learning, and what they can contribute professionally.

A Connected Network for News, Literature, and Other Services

The broader ambition is to develop PothikTV as part of a connected Pothik Network.

Under this plan, PothikTV’s community and professional platform would be linked with PothikNews, a literary platform, a marketplace, and other digital services.

At the centre of this network would be a single Pothik Account.

Once the planned Single Sign-On, or SSO, system is implemented, users would be able to access multiple Pothik Network services with the same digital identity, reducing the need to create separate accounts for each service.

More Than Readers: Active Participants

In traditional news media, people generally engage as readers or viewers. PothikTV aims to make that relationship more participatory.

Some users may visit to read the news. Others may share developments from their communities, follow journalists, take courses, explore professional opportunities, or build a reputation through their skills and work.

This participatory approach is central to how PothikTV intends to distinguish itself from a conventional news portal.

From Local Journalism to Global Connections

Journalists across Bangladesh’s districts and subdistricts produce important reporting, yet much of that work receives limited attention beyond local audiences.

PothikTV hopes to build a network where local journalists can connect with a wider professional community through their identities, reporting, and knowledge of the places they cover.

Its long-term vision is a shared digital space where a reporter in Brahmanbaria, an editor in Dhaka, and a Bangla-speaking journalist abroad can discover one another’s work and communicate.

### A Simple Question Behind the Vision

If people use separate platforms for social connections, job searches, learning, and publishing, why should there not be a shared digital space built around the professional needs of journalists and media workers?

PothikTV is seeking a technology-based answer to that question.

Its ambition is to bring news, community, professional networking, education, employment opportunities, AI assistance, fact-checking, and digital identity into one connected ecosystem.

How successfully that ambition translates into practice will depend on the quality of its technology, participation from journalists, editorial credibility, and the trust it earns from users.

For journalists, writers, students, and anyone interested in the future of digital media,

শহর আমাদের বেঁচে থাকতে শেখায়, কিন্তু কখনো কখনো বেঁচে থাকার অনুভূতিটাই কেড়ে নেয়। প্রতিদিন একই ঘড়ির কাঁটা, একই রাস্তা, একই কংক্রিটের দেয়াল, একই ব্যস্ত মুখের ভিড়। চারদিকে এত মানুষ, অথচ মানুষের জন্য মানুষের সময় ক্রমশ কমে আসে। জীবনটা আজকাল ফরমালিনে ডুবিয়ে রাখা কোনো ফলের মতো হয়ে গেছে, দেখতে সতেজ, ভেতরে স্বাদহীন।

এমন এক যান্ত্রিক জীবন থেকে হঠাৎ একদিন মুক্তির ডাক এল তিতাসের কাছ থেকে। কবি শাহ মোহাম্মদ সানাউল হকের আন্তরিক আমন্ত্রণে সেই ডাকেই সাড়া দিলাম। মনে হলো, বহুদিন পর কেউ শহরের বদ্ধ জানালাটা খুলে দিয়ে বললেন, চলো, আজ কিছুক্ষণ নদীর কাছে বসি; দেখি জল এখনো মানুষের ক্লান্তি বুঝতে পারে কি না।