Distribution- a rewarding part of the process

The most rewarding phase of the public journalism process arrived a little bit too sudden. After all the hard work and effort we put into the course we would have liked to have a public showing of all our work from ward 7 and 8 in the community. A little bit more foresight and planning would have prevented this time constraint. However, the course was new to us all and often we did not know what to expect. We embarked on the journey with baby steps in order to work as a team and make sense of the learning during the process. Therefore, when the final phase of distribution arrived for us, (a phase which will hopefully mark new beginnings for others) we decided to distribute our work as subgroups in order to show it to the community.

Television journalist students decided to convert their AVI files to MP4 in order to Bluetooth it via cell phones. Radio and Photo journalist students decided to burn their work on DVD’s. Design and Writing journalist students already gained exposure with their wallpapers. Besides the individual efforts to show our own work to wards 7 and 8, we also decided collectively to choose prominent members of the community to hand out the 2010 Makana Ward Focus DVD’s to. These DVD’s contain all the slideshows and documentaries from all the wards in Grahamstown. This turned out to be the most rewarding part of the process. DVD’s were handed out to libraries (Fingo library and Duna public library in Joza and Public Library in town), Joza clinic, Nombulelo secondary school, the police station in Joza,to subjects of our stories and to the main catalysts/connectors we have build relationships with over the past months. There are still a few DVD’s to be handed out to people who have been unavailable. For example to...surprise surprise...our ward councillors! Other people who have also been unavailable and who we would like to personally hand over our DVD’s are MR Dozo, ANC Youth League member who attended the public meeting and raised questions about our purpose, and Michael Whisson (DA councillor) who helped us with information about our wards.

While handing out the DVD’s we explained the process and the purpose of our course. Individuals were extremely happy to receive the DVD. Many people could not believe they did not have to pay for it or that we did not want something in return. All we asked was that they would watch the DVD and encourage other people to watch it. The community members at the school and libraries expressed that they would make the DVD available for other people to see. One of the libraries will play the DVD so anyone who visits the library can watch it. One of our catalysts who have helped us so much expressed that he is going to arrange a showing so that other people in the community can watch it. Especially the individuals who were part of a story were extremely happy and surprised to receive something back. It is unfortunate that we cannot get their feedback and reaction after they watch it.

All in all it has been a rewarding journey and a fantastic learning experience. We are hoping that our work in one way or another will make an impact in the community. We have build relationships with members of the community, and we hope that the students next year will learn from our mistakes and successes, and pick up where we left off. The door for change is open.

The end of a new beginning

Nicole Bloch

The Journalism Democracy and Development and Critical Media Production Course have broadened my horizon. It has given me a chance to leap out of my narrow minded journalism box. Though, I am not saying I am narrow minded, but I realize that my journalism practises have been.

I started the course with a lot of apprehension and frustration. Like many other students, I feared that we were going to exploit our subjects for the purpose of our lecturers’ research and our own grades. Our first public meeting only emphasised my concerns when a member of the community questioned our project and raised many valid points, like our timing and if we were going to give something back to the community.

However, we soon started to create bonds with other members in the community, and raised some of their issues in our documentaries, sound slides and wallpapers. We concentrated on the overarching theme that was raised in the public meeting, that of ‘emptiness’ and ‘youth’, as there is a lack of service delivery in wards 7 and 8 and children have little recreational space. They are often seen playing in rubbish dumps or on graveyards.

I believe that the soccer tournament was therefore extremely successful and rewarding, as it gave many children from ward 7 and 8 a chance to play and to bond. Our main purpose was to help the youth organize themselves, so that they themselves too could organize such events. However, the project seems to be unsustainable as no other soccer event has been arranged by the people in the wards. One of the reasons is that the soccer ball is flat and they do not have another ball yet. There are also several other reasons why the project is unsustainable which are mainly due to our lack of foresight during the planning of the event.

Nevertheless, I have learned a lot and I have mainly realised that, to be a good journalist, I do not have to stay within my box or role. I have learned that I can use for example marketing skills and activism in the fight for chance and social equality.

As a television crew, we have decided to convert or AVI files to mp4 files and Bluetooth them via telephone. Many people in our wards do not have DVD players so we thought this would be a better way of reaching people. Many people in our wards do have cell phones to which they can load the documentaries.

Yesterday myself and Tim distributed the 2010 Makana ward focus DVD’s, which has all the documentaries and slideshows from the different wards. It was a satisfying journey as people could not belief that they got a free DVD. They all wondered what we wanted in return, and for once, we could assure them there was nothing we needed in return. We just asked them to watch the DVD and pass it around or show to other people. This final part of the process was a rewarding end of a new beginning.

In the end...

Khatija Nxedlana

What seemed to be a mammoth task at the outset, proved to be a truly rewarding experience. Working in a large group of 20 along with the community members from wards seven and eight we set out to solve one of the challenges the community faced. Our overarching theme was “emptiness” and “a lack” focussing on the youth. We split into smaller groups to produce content that would reach a wider audience, creating awareness and possible get aid from leadership in the wards and the municipality.

Our intentions too were to take the works produced back into the community disproving the notion of journalism students coming into the wards, taking stories and never looking back. Focussing on children specifically, our group organised a soccer tournament on Saturday the 2nd October. The event brought close to 100 children to the field, making the day a huge success. The children had fun and for a change escaped playing in rubbish dumps and graveyards. Being able to help out in a small way obviously made us very happy; however our hopes were for this sort of soccer day to continue every Saturday. One of the prises for the winning team was a soccer ball promoting regular soccer practice and tournaments.

Public journalism ensures that journalists become immersed into that which they are reporting. My view and understanding of the role of journalists has changed as a result of this process. Firstly, aside from radio, the CMP course has been the most practical course in Media Studies. I enjoy that because it enables you to learn first-hand. As much as I promote education in terms of text books and reading academic articles, I’ve always felt that real life experience is the best education. Secondly, the focus for the past three years has been solely on mainstream journalism which states that objectivity is something journalists should strive for amongst other things. This is not a bad thing at all, only that this process has taught me that journalists can be involved with the people they’re dealing with and not see them purely as subjects. At the same time, tell the truth, deliver the facts and a story that shows all sides involved.

CMP: the good, the bad and the impossible

Prinesha Naidoo

Another academic year has come and gone so too have countless courses, of which the Journalism Democracy, Development and Critical Media Production (JDD-CMP) course was the most memorable.

In my opinion everything about the JDD-CMP course, from being met with dissent by community members who accused Rhodes Journalism Students of exploiting them and their personal stories, to dealing with a messy story about human remains, involving several key actors who were either unreachable or refused to comment or just didn’t care about the plight of those for whom they were responsible, was agonising.   

I expected more from the course, I would have liked to have made more of a difference in wards 7 and 8, two of Makana Municipality’s most impoverished zones. Yes, we held a successful soccer tournament in response to residents’ complaints about the lack of adequate recreational facilities and activities, causing their children to stray.  This initiative has however proved unsustainable, almost a month has passed since the tournament and despite their promises, the community members who were actively involved in recruiting and coaching players in run-up to our tournament as well as refereeing matches at the tournament have yet to hold another tournament. Furthermore, the fact community members approached us with serious problems such as poor housing and sanitation, unemployment, cable theft and an overwhelming concern about the ever-increasing crime rate was disheartening – regardless of how hard we tried, we could not help them solve such problems.

As a television student, I also felt let down by the course. I looked forward to working in multimedia groups, learning from my peers and being exposed to the intricacies and necessary software for their respective specialisations. This however, was not the case as the course required television students to work independently of other specialisations.

Despite or rather because of the aforementioned problems, I feel that I learnt a lot and grew both as a media producer and individual during the course of the CMP component of the course. As scary as it was, going blind into a strange place helped me develop the necessary skills to engage with a host of different types of people as well as to maintain contact with sources. I also learnt of the paramount importance of fact-checking, just by immersing ourselves in the community and talking to locals we found that a visually appealing story that planned on covering was based on hearsay – the information given to us by a local was unfounded. Having to deal with a messy story about human remains, as stated above, whose angle every so often as a result of the amount of people and institutions involved in the matter and the fact that the area in which the human remains were found is a potential historical site, taught me that sometimes having one back-up plan just isn’t enough – as excruciating as it was, going back to the drawing board each time taught me how to see and thus present the same old story in a different light.   

In terms of distributing our final product, as a television unit we felt that handing out DVDs community members who barely afford to make ends meet, let alone television sets and DVD players was rather silly. Therefore, we decided to only to hand DVDs to the relevant authoritative figures used in our stories. In terms of giving our finished products back to the community, we decided to convert the avi files to mp4 files, which are compatible on cell phones and to send them to the community members, whose cell phone numbers we collected at the public meeting, via Bluetooth. This means that our work has the potential to be viewed by the masses and to go viral as they can be sent free of charge, from cell phone to cell phone via Bluetooth.

While the stories covered offer no outright solutions to the problems vexing wards 7 and 8, I strongly believe that using Bluetooth to publicise our finished products, will go a long way in the repairing the reputation and damage done by past Rhodes Journalism students in the greater Grahamstown area.      

Good night and good... riddance?

So the CMP course has come to a close, and I had imagined myself feeling swollen with joy and excitement to be rid of the entire process. But this is simply not the case, and I am not entirely sure why. I feel a gentle sadness when I realise that the CMP process has ended and we shall play no further part in it for this year.
It's like having a stray dog staying with you for a while. At first you are not very enthusiastic in getting involved, but then time passes, and when it comes time for the stray dog to leave, you feel a minor anguish in letting go. This being the case, I feel optimistic in saying that we made a difference to the communities we were involved with. We set out, rather hesitantly, with the intentions of uncovering a few problems facing our communities. We did not know it at the time, but we would uncover a host of issues and pains that our fellow Grahamstownians live with on a daily basis. Of course we had to be realistic in our hopes of making a difference. We could not do very much about the lack of RDP housing, or the power cuts they face every few hours. However, we did focus our energies and hopes on making a change that was possible. We set out to try and shed some light on the lack of activities available to the youth within the community, and we accomplished this through a highly successful soccer tournament on an overcast but warm Saturday.We gave the community some attention; attention they had been starved of for a very long time.
In my opinion, Group For78, we did our job. We did it well.

Time to say goodbye

By: Alexandra Smith


The JDD-CMP course as a whole was itself both a wonderful and challenging experience. It allowed us the opportunity to experience a new form of journalism which was public journalism.

I was at first very nervous about going into a community and trying to identify problems within a community which are very prevalent and important to them and not being able to solve them. There was a hostility felt by the community when we entered as they felt that we were coming into their space and taking stories from them without giving anything back to them. This was one of the main concerns for our group and myself as we wanted to get involved as much as we could with the community, build relationships and try to give back to them in some way or form. During the Civic Mapping process we found that the main issues were that of housing, the bucket system and the lack of resources available to young children and teens. We did not have it in our power to address the main issues as we were not seen to harness that amount of influence and power. We decided to tackle the issues of the lack of resources in the community which had a direct impact on the children who lived there. As a writer the aim was to provide an insight into the problems and try and see if the municipality was aware of them in order to provide solutions. The stories that were written were published in the Grocott’s which reaches a large audience.

In an order to try and create a form of sustainable development we initiated and organised a soccer day for the children in the community. Community member mobilised teams of soccer players and the day was an over all success.

The entire experience I agree was a very worthwhile one, as I felt that journalists need to be in contact with the community as they are often overlooked. I did feel that the course was very time consuming and it was often difficult to manage all the work and demands put on us. I did learn how to handle sources and engage with people in positions of authority. I hope that the work that we did will have a significant impact and result in some form of change or sustainable development.

A quiet finish...

Catherine Deiner

The JDD CMP course came, with much scepticism, and left... quietly.  The final distribution which should have been the highlight feels somewhat quiet.  Perhaps it is the method that we have chosen to distribute our pieces? I know that limited time is perhaps to be blamed but it seems sad that after much hardwork to get our soundslides together, simply handing out a dvd is a letdown.  Maybe we should have gone with sheets in the streets???? any takers??

Perhaps it is only because the soccer tournament was such a hype and the overall highlight of the JDD CMP course for me.  I think that the soccer day, for me, summed up community/public journalism: helping communities find their own solutions to their problems.  The biggest adjustment I had to make in doing this course was to realise that everyone does not feel the same way that I do about community engagement.  This was frustrating to begin with but looking back, I think that this course has made more people civic-minded and that we will all leave Rhodes as journalists with a hint of compassion for communities and a respect for public journalism.
 
I will be taking a dvd to Sr Theresa today and The Assumption Nutrition Centre on Monday and, hopefully I will get to watch the dvd with the soccer players from Ward 7 and hear what they have to say about the soundslide. I would like to get their feedback before I pat myself on the back for a job well done.

All good things come to an end

Nasreen Bahadur


The JDD and CMP course was a whole new experience for me, and although it had it had its fair share of ups and downs, I would say this was probably the best course I’ve done this year. I enjoyed that we were able to put the theory we had learnt into practice and also exercise everything we’ve done this year in our different specialisations. This course helped us engage with the community and explored journalism in a way we have not done before. After getting a feel of the wards we were allocated in, it was up to us as a group to decide on what to do about it, this gave us a sense of agency, that we could make a contribution and make a difference to that community. As a group we worked well together to hold an eventful soccer tournament for the youth in order to tackle the issue of lack of recreational activities in the wards. This was a huge success and we hope that they continue to engage in sporting activities in their free time.

Working in a group required long hours of decisions and frustration, although we did share a couple of laughs here and there. It was a fun experience and interesting to see the different people’s ideas. I did find that working in a group took up a lot more time and one of the challenging things in the beginning was finding a suitable time for everyone to meet and work together. However we gained an understanding with each other and it all fell into place and we managed to create some amazing pieces of work.

I think the most challenging part of the course was trying to be objective. As a journalist we are taught to be objective and not to take sides, but after listening to the people and all their issues and concerns, it was very hard to gain a positive view of the municipality and the ward councillors. In a way it altered our values and there was a sense of social responsibility. This course was an eye opener as to what real journalism is about, for example running around to schedule interviews and meetings, take photographs, listen to the people and give them the opportunity to voice their concerns. Overall, I think it’s important for a journalist to engage in the wider community and deal with issues that is not usually dealt with, and through the JDD CMP course we were able to do that and much more.

Final reflections...

By Divania Timmal

The JDD-CMP course has been very educational for me, as I was exposed to a form of journalism that I had not encountered previously. We interacted with people from the township and learnt a lot about them and the problems they face on a daily basis. Although most of their grievances were too serious for us to deal with (eg. RDP housing and the lack of water), we did attempt to expose the shocking situations that they lived in.

Our aim was to get the community to create sustainable solutions to some of their problems. For example, since children often had nothing to do and therefore resorted to alcohol or crime, our group decided to host a soccer tournament. Although we organised the day and time, it was up to community members to come together and form teams. It was a huge success, proving that the community is able to unite. Our hope is that these soccer tournaments become a regular weekend activity in the township, therefore providing the youth with a form of recreation.

The writers' articles will be published in Grocott's Mail. This will reach a huge audience, and we hope that the problems we brought up in the stories receive the attention they deserve.

I think that it important for journalists to engage with the community and allow them to set the news agenda. In this way, the stories that are actually important to them are given a forum. It was challenging to earn the trust of the community as they are very wary of student journalists. However, I think we were successful in establishing relationships with some amazing people, and I think our work will make a difference, if only a small one.

Living outside my bubble...

By Raessa Begum Rehman

This Journalism, Democracy, Development and Critical Media Production course 2010 has not only been an enjoyable experience for me, but an eye opening one as well. We as student journalists were taken out of our comfort-zone of Rhodes University and had our barriers shifted to the rest of the Grahamstown community ridden with issues and problems beyond our capacity to help such as lack of water, RDP housing and no recreational activities or facilities for the youth. These issues among many others have been explored. Being a radio student, working with a photojournalism student was probably one of my best experiences of this course. It had given me to opportunity to meet someone who specialised in a very visual form of journalism. This was daunting and at the same time extremely exciting as we collaborated our thoughts, ideas and training in the past year and produced media that we are really and truly proud of. We put together an audio slide show showcasing the lack of internet facilities in our wards (7 & 8). My partner and I made a personal decision to create two audio slide shows: One highlighted the lack of internet facilities in the township and the other showcased an ex-prisoner, Vuyolwethu Nekile who is trying to start up an internet café in the township and is looking for sponsors. We were able to engage to a large extent with the people we interviewed coming out of the course, creating relationships with the people we met along the way.

We as a class, channelled our energy towards an alternative kind of journalism, different to what we have been trained to do in the past two and a half years. Moving away from the writing skills courses in first year journalism, the production course in second year and current affairs and reporting earlier this year, I can safely say that JDD-CMP has definitely made me not only a better community journalist, but a more thoughtful person. At times I felt helpless listening to people’s issues but now realise that I can help. By providing a platform for the community to air their views and issues, I, as a training journalist, am in fact a catalyst for change and hope to follow through with this in the near future. So many people need their voices to be heard and we have the power to expose those voices and hopefully make an impact in the community striving for betterment and change.

Personally, I would have loved for this course to run over an entire semester. Time was a huge factor. Getting people to talk about what affected them most and trying to establish stronger bonds with the community takes much more than a couple of weeks. I see myself dedicating alot more time to do my bit for communities who need that extra bit of special attention. Living outside of my bubble has made me appreciate life much more and I hope that in the future, this course would open many other students’ eyes as it did mine.

Time to Call it a day

By Yvonne Nhuta

The JDD-CMP course has been a major learning experience for me as an individual and I think I can safely say a good majority of the JMS3 class. Although it was met with a bit of scepticism at the beginning of the semester, the process of learning to practise public journalism has most likely changed the minds of a lot of students, myself included.

When I first heard about what we would be doing as part of the course, I felt that our venture into the field of public/development  journalism came at the price of extorting the greater Grahamstown community. I felt that although the intention may have been honourable, our audiences and sources would feel that we were merely using them to get a grade and ultimately a degree. I thought in essence we would not really be making that much of a positive impact on these communities but in fact would be giving them a visibly negative and fraudulent perception of Rhodes journalism students.  The main reason for this train of thought was the fact that essentially the work we were going to be doing was going to be done because we were told to do so. As student s we did not sit down and come up with a public journalism project by ourselves and consequently we would be, in a manner of speaking, using these communities for our own benefit – to pass this course.

Although this perception of the course made it difficult to see how much we could actually do for these communities, I found that as the course went along, the work we produced was no longer merely for marks but intended in our small way as a method of exacting change in the Grahamstown communities. It became less about only getting it done, but also about getting it done right. After speaking to community members during the civic mapping process, it was evident that some of them felt that previous JMS classes had let them down by finishing their course and never going back to follow up and not leaving any lasting impact. As a result of this the drive to do something for the community through our journalism became stronger. One of the main concerns in our areas was the lack of resources for the youth, and stemming from this focus we helped in organising a soccer tournament for the children of wards 7 and 8. After this tournament I felt that in our small way we had given the community a platform from which they could begin to exact change in their own areas.

The actual media production process was quite demanding with regards to both time and energy. It required a lot more than most of us were used to also considering that we were working in groups and not individually. I feel I was quite fortunate as my group and sub group members worked quite well together and problems with group dynamics were somewhat averted.  I did feel that we were under more pressure working as a group because all our ideas had to be meshed together to form one cohesive and clearly comprehensible idea. It was a growing experience as a designer, learning to value the creative ideas of others and also appreciating the significance of all the other specialisations particularly writing and editing and photojournalism in the WE(P)D case.  We may not have been able to get people new houses or gotten the municipality to provide more water for the community but we did get the community members voices heard and their problems highlighted. Which I suppose is a fundamental learning point in this course; that as journalists we can only do so much but what we produce has limitless possibilities.

Closing the Circle

 By Kezia Swanepoel

The end is nigh for our Civic Mapping Project and the end looks so very different from what we all imagined back in August. 

When we first heard the words "public journalism" we did not know where to start. Our public meeting was invaluable in determining the aims of what we wanted to achieve in our wards from the responses we received. The problems were endless but there was something we could do. By using different forms of media to report on the problems raised by the people and giving them a voice, we were able to achieve the aim of publicly reporting. In our pieces, there is a strong theme for the call for accountability. The problems such as housing and rubbish collection have only gotten worse over the years for the residents of wards 8 and 7 without any help from Makana Municipality. What we wanted was to get the authorities to notice and ideally do their job but this is not enough for the people we met. Our aims had to adapt themselves to the devastation these people felt because they had not been heard or helped for so long.

Therefore we managed to ruffle authority’s feathers and provide some form of a solution to one of the problems, recreation for the youth, by holding a soccer day and soccer clinic. Through our journalism on the ground, we made more secure relationships with the local residents because we used our journalism for their benefit. In the end, I believe we managed to close the circle on our general aim.

Our final WEPD distributions have highlighted the problems through a story on the soccer day and a photo essay on the demise of soccer clubs in the area. This photo essay dealt with a little known piece of history that explains the dilemma of the future- there is no recreation for the youth. This issue is important when looked at below surface level. The soccer culture used to be beneficial in shaping the youth and providing them with support and companionship yet this has been replaced by shebeens who show the games to locals. By raising this issue and thrusting it in the public eye, one can hope that more will be done to avoid neglecting the youth and reviving a once beneficial pastime.

In the end – JDD-CMP review

By Divia Padayachee



The last two terms have been a whirlwind of experiences both within our production groups and the communities we have explored. In the beginning I did not know how to approach the concept of public journalism and having to go into a new environment and conduct this public philosophy was an intimidating experience. Nevertheless we have come to the end of our public journalism stint.

After three terms of working on my own I had to become a member of a group, share ideas and produce media which was to be used to communicate with either people within our given community or to show to those who would be able to assist or help deal with problems in our area. Speaking as a communications designer, part of the WEPD group, I believe we have accomplished this task. Our first product was a wallpaper highlighting one of the major concerns in both wards 7 and 8 which was a lack of recreational activities for the youth. It looked at the waste problem which lead to children playing in rubbish heaps which are unhygienic and dangerous. This was distributed in public meeting spots in both areas such as community halls and the public library. It generated great response by the public and was read by passersby.

This wallpaper has now been transformed into two pages which will be published in Grocott’s Mail shortly. Instead of a second wallpaper a further two pages have been designed, also for Grocott’s Mail, based on the youth soccer tournament held by our group with the help of key community members. This tournament brought together the youth of wards 7 and 8 in a friendly game of football as a way to get the youth of the streets and out of the rubbish heaps.

Despite my misapprehension of the JDD-CMP course, this was an experience that won’t be forgotten. There have been times when I was quite unhappy about having to work in a group and go out into the wards but I guess the outcome was worth it. With regards to CMP it has been an adjustment, for me as a design student, to work with three other people. Although there are more ideas being passed around, it proves difficult to agree on a design concept or create two pages that look as if they were created by the same person for example. Also, deciding on a time which is convenient to all becomes another hurdle or setback as everyone has different responsibilities outside of the JDD-CMP course. Apart from this, the WEPD group that I was a part of did what was required of them and I am grateful for their efforts and the bonding that occurred within the design and writing labs :)

The other thing I did not like was that there were often a million things to do in a week or maybe it just felt that way. At times I would get confused about what was due when and what was expected of me. Understandably, this course requires a lot of one’s time especially in the light of public journalism as we need to interact with the public in order to turn out our stories but I think it must be remembered that we are studying other majors. If this course was a type of specialisation then the time spent on it would be suitable. Our group was lucky enough to be given wards that were fairly close by; however, other groups in our class were not as fortunate and this must be kept in mind in future.

In wrapping up my thoughts on the JDD-CMP course I think that it was an interesting change to what we usually do in the JMS course. Instead of reading up on theories and submitting assignments or essays based on them I was able to experience a form of journalism first-hand so to speak and I am looking forward to viewing the productions of our group as well as the rest of our JMS 3 class.

Focus Group on Blog Posts

What is our shared understanding of public journalism?

Going beyond norms of gathering source info and reporting. Speaking to people in communities who are affected directly by issues. Going out into the public, finding voices which are waiting to be heard. Going to as many people as we can. No focus, but rather to find out (listen). Producing media that aims at facilitating solutions form identified problems. Stems from community deliberation. Look at problems they need help solving. Moving away from interesting stories, Bringing stories to the newsroom that aren’t necessarily newsroom stories.  Collaborating, bridge between media and public, find issues public raises. Community voice very neglected. Be able to make their voices heard. They can participate in improving their lives. Immersing yourself, following up on some stories. Can go more in depth. Focus on history behind their situations, get very involved. Catalyst for social change, we initiate conversation among the people. Empowering them, use our means to help them. Citizens influence what we report on… Facilitate debate on issues affecting community. Moves away from main stream journalism in that here, you become involved. Highlight marginalised voices. Allow people to engage with journalists, people set the agenda, they decide what should be in the media. Allow the community to solve their own problems, but you help them along. Navigate or direct people towards some solution. Personal and affective. Give it its full “human-weight”. Journalists having to adapt to a different community. Every community will be different. Making time for people. Having to work with citizens that don’t want to cooperate. E.g. Putting up wall paper. Immersing yourself in community. Platform for people to air their voices. Shows sense of accountability.  “Consulting the public becomes your editorial meeting”. Fights the idea of objectivity, not going in to get a story and leave, getting to know the person and their story. Humanising the story, taking what people say and check it against a factual checklist. Got to pick up stories, got them to listen to each other as well.  Citizen - cantered , became a trampoline for citizens to jump on and reach officials who are too high to notice. Allowed us to use Grahamstown, as a setting to explore citizen journalism.

Comment on geography
-Some people believe that public journalism experience is not limited to context of Grahamstown. I.e. it isn’t geographically specific.
-Someone spoke about how people make a distinction between ‘Suburbs’ and ‘Townships’
-It was argued that p.j. is not necessarily taking stories that are ordinarily classified as newsworthy and taking ‘boring stories’
-Gill asked what the norm of a story is. People responded by saying that it is characterised by new values learnt in first year.
-Someone said that public journalism is a kind of parachute journalism where you get your story, you get in and get out. Newspapers today do not have the time or money to have all their staff immerse themselves in communities every time they want stories. Someone added that Public journalism does need a lot of time; it’s not something you just decide to do in one week for example.
-It was argued public journalism could work here if everyone gave up an hour of time every week to continue public journalism without enforcing a time constraint on it
- Daneel says that P.J. does take more time and who pays for the extra time you spend doing p.j. and immersing yourself. Are you a journalist all the time or only when you are at work? If you do P.J. doing your own time that is.
-Argued to unlike p.j. with certain media production ideals, such as having a target audience. With public journalism sometimes your target audience is not necessarily the public, it might not be for general broadcasting (it’s a different idea in that context because most journalism productions are for the public but with some p.j. it is targeted at people who can make a change like government).
-Argued perhaps its better to have a primary audience rather than one target audience but is that journalism or public relations? Mediation between people and government for example.
-Shouldn’t  journalism meant to be for people to do something? Answer – it should be to mobilize the people to finding a solution for themselves, not necessarily to fix it yourself.
- I think as journalists we’re suppose to create something to gain a reaction from the audience so that someone will help make changes where they are necessary, in particular from people who have the power to do something. Sometimes however you don’t get the reaction you are looking for, for example when you try to get a hold of officials they refuse to comment or watch the productions you have made but that’s what makes radical/investigative journalism which makes you do more research to find out why the reaction you want is not materialising.
-What makes doing radical journalism difficult for us is that we are affiliated with Rhodes, like with the municipality meeting, if we had not packed up and left with rod after we got kicked out and just played the videos what if we had changed her mind? Are we all automatons that follow in the footsteps of rod? Are we scared of the consequences? What power do we have as long as we are student journalists?
-These are the same questions you face when you go into work for a bigger company? You will have to choose again whether you are a journalist from 9 to 5 or all the time. Are you willing to take a risk to find the truth or will you be too frightened to do that? You have to decide for yourself what kind of journalist you are. So, Journalists need to hold themselves to account to what is reasonable in terms of what their aims are.
-Gill said that it’s interesting that we complain about being disempowered as journalists in that we feel with have no authority in the eyes of municipality because we are student journalists and yet as FOR78 we held a successful soccer day and made a contribution to creating a recreational activity for children in a place where there were hardly any. So we did make a change, we did something
-Someone argues there are bigger issues that aren’t’ getting enough coverage still because we are student journalists and cannot get far with municipality

We don’t appreciate how hard it is to make a success of civic journalism. It’s all about sustainability. As a group we have managed to create solutions to very small things that have been instantaneous. In six months though, we won’t be able to see it and that is hard for the community to fathom. You have to be careful not give yourself too much accolade and this course is very ambitious. Small scale success is not enough to cause long lasting improvement.
Most of our class power iand wanting do something is from anger. We had to convince people we were different and to affect social life with positive change. We wanted to form long lasting relationships to do so.
We were very sensitive to the idea that how previous groups have let down the community and left a negative impression. We have achieved something but if the community has to now accommodate another group of journalists I don’t think our experience was so positive that they will be very impressed. It’s so difficult to get to a level where the community will accept us.

One of the major things is that there are such huge problems. For us to try and leave a lasting impact and to change the horrific conditions it is not viable. By linking with Grocott’s would be better. I think that they would be more accepting of journalists at Rhodes.

It has to be ongoing. But the community has to step up and create a more sustainable solution.
We have to facilitate the deliberation to the solutions. We have been in production for weeks and we have to go to exams at the point where the production goes into effect.

Our sound slides should be able to prompt people to do something for themselves.
We have to facilitate that. It is not enough to spur people into motion.
We cant babysit the community.
The fact that the story about the soccer was done should initiate questions and the motion toward solutions.
Facilitating the public leads to more potential. We are still at a stage that needs facilitation and a push from us to get the community into action.
The soccer day was enough for the motivation for change. It was mostly a gesture to repair the township.
Our responsibility is to the stories justice and to take it to the relevant people.
What we are trying to accomplish now is to help people understand what the problems are and who to get the answers from. We are facilitating understanding about the problems. We cant get rid of the housing problems and the mass graves but we can direct people  to the official sources and the ones who can help them in some way.

Comment about group work

Think about collective stated aims and goals six weeks ago and how were they achieved?
Frustrated about different people’s views and levels of eagerness and enthusiasm.  Best experience of journalism and working with people who have different views about doing journalism.  Interesting to mix and mingle with other journalists in the course.  Big group of people it’s different to get common ground.  Through the year, didn’t think about the fourth term.  I didn’t want to do investigative journalism, immersing yourself within the community.  The community setting up the news agenda, everyone looks at the course differently.  A lot of people putting input.  Email eachother about everything we were doing so that we could remain a group, group dynamics and journalistic intention different.  Should have been at the beginning of the year?  Have to get it done, worn out at the end of the year.  Would have liked to approach this course with a fresh approach.  Different working pairs to understand each other’s way of working.  We not really a group, up to community meeting we were a group but now we are working in pairs we don’t have much to say about other people’s work.  Dealing with our work and not how we are doing corporately.  Personally immersed in creating journalism then it means to you, no journalistic curiosity to know what the rest of the group is doing? Print and radio everything had to work together, here it doesn’t matter whether it all works together. A lot of it is about if I knew then what I know now.  Journalistic curiosity within the same medium.  Working in the same area.  It’s not about not caring about other specialisations but you understand the process of your specialisation’s pieces. You feel you can learn more from other people in your specialisation.  TV people didn’t get to work with other specialisations. 

Reflection on the process of Critical Media Production

Reflection on the process of Critical Media Production


By Daneel and Ntombi

Our group had our public meeting on the evening of 9 September at Luvuyo Hall in Ward 8. For many of us, this was the moment where Haas’ conception of a public philosophy for public journalism moved from the realm of theory into practice. As is often the case, this type of transition was far smooth. Our pair’s main objectives (and the resultant journalistic processes and outputs) were rooted in the experiences of the public meeting. To briefly recap that episode would thus help to provide a base from which to reflect upon our subsequent journalistic approach.

As a group we had come to the public meeting enthusiastic, ready to hear the public’s concerns and to give them exposure through journalistic output in the hope of effecting a positive change in the community. Disappointingly, our optimism was largely reciprocated by apathy and scepticism in the community. This was illustrated by a much smaller turnout than we had hoped for (we had advertised and promoted the meeting quite extensively).

Through the public meeting and more private conversations it became clear the community’s disinterest was rooted in disillusionment towards Journalism students and Rhodes University in general. There was very much an attitude of “The university always comes here, makes these big promises, but they never achieve anything to help our community. They just use us to boost their image and P.R., and for journalism students to get their degrees and to move on and forget about us.” This was very concerning and we felt particularly angry (at the university) and hard done by the fact that we had automatically been disqualified in public opinion merely because of our affiliation to Rhodes and the JMS Department. Some of us wanted to make this public cynicism the main focus of our piece through highlighting Rhodes’ and the Journalism Department’s hypocrisy, despite the university’s rhetorical commitment towards development and community engagement. Luckily, once tempers had cooled, we decided that this strategy would be a little too cynical. We opted thus not to fester upon the shortcomings of the past, but rather to work towards becoming an exception to the community’s general experience of Journalism students. This required us to identify the main reasons for the public’s ingrained disillusionment and to avoid these pitfalls in our own efforts.

Once the disillusionment had been voiced, our public meeting went ahead quite successfully. The public where given equal opportunity to raise their concerns and issues, to be heard and to respond to one another. In this way thus we succeeded in creating a platform where a “deliberating public [could come] into being”. Many of the issues rose where rooted in major socio-economic problems – housing, employment, sanitation, electricity. We felt very much that public frustration was rooted in the fact that these issues are brought up time and again in the local press and covered by students, but very little improvement seems to actually stem from these reports. As we have come to understand, there is a generic sequence that has become common place in student journalists dealing with a community to produce media products. This sequence is accounts in part for the contempt with which journalism students are often received in a community:

i) Students access a community.

ii) They often identify the big, virtually insurmountable problems

iii) They compile a media package to highlight these problems.

iv) They present this package to an authority that should be able to address these problems

v) The authority is incapable or simply does not have the conviction to address the problem.

vi) The student leaves shortly after presenting the media, and is not further responsible for holding that official to account.

vii) The community sees no return for their participation in producing the media package.

viii) Next year the community are expected to accommodate a new batch of students.

In ‘A Public Philosophy for Public Journalism’, Haas states that “public journalism is as much about problem solving as it is about facilitating public deliberation.” If the objective of attaining public deliberation that could facilitate problem solving is not reached, then the public journalism product has not succeeded. This means that students should acknowledge the constraints within which they are working and identify problems that they can reasonably hope to assist in solving, or at least mitigating in some sense. These constraints include a limited time frame and limited capacity of a student journalist to influence authorities into action. In our view it is thus better for students working in the CMP course to adopt modest and reasonable goals rather than overly ambitious and untenable ones.

In light of this belief we thought it absolutely essential not to give false hope through making promises that would probably not materialise. Haas notes that journalists should help a community to identify “problems [that] could be adequately addressed by citizens themselves” and distinguishing these from problems that “require more deep-seated, systemic intervention by government officials.” We formulated our objectives of not disappointing the public around the assumption that problems that could be adequately addressed through local intervention by the citizens themselves had a higher chance of being solved than problems that would require “interventions of a broader regional, state or national scope.”

This assumption came to inspire our choice upon the final topic for our Critical Media Production Soundslide. One of the problems that came out our public meeting is that there was not enough recreational opportunities for children and youth, and this fact helped to encourage anti-social behaviour such as drug/alcohol abuse and petty crime. At first it seems that this problem is rooted in the fact that there is a lack of recreational facilities such as parks and sports equipment. Upon closer investigation we came to realise, however, that despite the presence of these same shortcomings there was still a big proactive soccer movement amongst the youth a mere ten years prior. This ‘soccer culture’ had died down, according to one source, because of an influx of television, alcohol and drugs into the community. It became clear that there was a shift in mindset between two successive generations of youth in the area, one that could not be adequately explained by a lack of resources. This was thus a problem that could be solved by local intervention.

We thus aimed at creating a package that would appeal to the nostalgia of the older generation and instil admiration in the younger generation. We wanted to create a dialogue between old and young that would see the youth readopting soccer as recreation under the guidance of the older generation. In this way we hoped that the anti-social behaviour that had replaced soccer would be re-replaced by soccer. In line with this we wanted to make the point that soccer is more than just recreation, that it instils discipline amongst individuals and solidarity between individuals. This solidarity could, in the opinion of our two main sources, assist in mobilising people to work together in other spheres for mutual benefit. We adopted this project because its success did not depend on help from outside sources, it was almost entirely dependent upon co-operation of the community.

We have opted to use two primary sources to be the two respective voices in the documentary. Our first source is concerned with framing the past i.e. how the soccer culture used to be. Our second source, also a remnant from that generation of soccer players is speaking about his efforts in retaining a soccer spirit amongst the youth through organising training sessions during the school vacations. In this way we have tried to create an identifiable link between the past and the present, one that would hopefully appeal to the youth to pick up soccer.

At this stage our Soundslide story is still in production and has not yet been presented to its intended audience. Whilst this is an obvious shortcoming, we have tried to nurture our objectives through other means. In very early stages of the course our CMP group came up with the idea of helping organise a soccer tournament for the youth in the community. In light of the objectives of our production we thought that this would be an apt substitute for a focus group. We thus resolved to volunteer ourselves for a position to be pivotal in ensuring that the soccer tournament was a success. In line with our belief that change should come from within the community we decided that mobilisation of the youth should be done by individuals within the community. The idea was thus that we provide refreshments, the necessary equipment (such as goals from Rhodes Soccer club and sponsored soccer balls from Albany Sports) and other logistical aspects of hosting the tournament, whilst adults in the community would mobilise and encourage the youth. In this way we hoped to pave the way for a better working relationship between the older and younger generation in mobilising around soccer. The event was an overwhelming success; our estimate is that around a hundred and fifty children and youth were involved over all.

Despite the on-the-day success of the tournament, we still have to identify the long term problems faced in terms of long term sustainability of this initiative. Soccer balls get easily punctured, and without a mobilising force in the community (one that acts independently of incentive from journalists) the soccer tournament will forever remain as pleasant memory of an isolated event. Despite our best intentions, we predict it to be unlikely that this desired sustainability will be attained unless we help to nurture it in a timeframe that transcends the CMP course. This is unfortunate, but brutally realistic. Our only hope is to try and encourage our two sources (who have taken on the sentiments of our production goals and were instrumental in mobilising youth for the tournament) to continue the initiative. Ideally we would be able to remain available if we can assist in the future.

I think that the above description of our journalistic approach and thinking goes some way in pre-empting a discussion of how the ideas of how the ideas raised in the JDD-CMP courses have helped reshape our identities as professionalising journalists. It may however be helpful to explicate this ‘reshaping’ somewhat.

First and fore mostly, we have tried to involve the public in every stage of our research and production. We have been encouraged to not only use the public as sources, but to use immersion in the community as a means to better understand and conceptualise the issues that we hoped to address through our journalism.

One of the most valuable aspects of this course has been the fact that one can spend a sufficient amount of time in researching the issues and communicating with one’s sources. This has had the effect of making the success of our productions and other initiatives a deeply personal matter. We befriended our sources. This had the added advantage of making us more trustworthy to them, and becoming privy to more private and nuanced information. Fore mostly though this helped to create a collaborative relationship. Our sources become empowered and as involved as us in shaping and framing the story. In this way, i.e. as pseudo co-producers, they also developed an interest in making the story become a success and in realising the goals that we were aiming for.

We have thus learned to private as well as professional interests vested in our work. This type of sensitivity allows for us to go into the world of professional journalism and really empathise with the bereaved people that may form the sources of our future projects. Also, this new concern would encourage us to create journalism that can be mobilised towards creating solutions (rather than mere exposure) for people’s problems.

All in all it was a empowering, eye opening and rewarding experience for both us and, I’m sure, the citizens that we worked with.

Public Journalism in practice

By Refilwe and Simone

As a Journalism 3 class we embarked on public journalism in Grahamstown focusing in on different wards. Being part of group 4, we were assigned wards 7 and 8 and our first objective was to get a sense of what these two communities were like. Looking at Tanni Haas’ public philosophy for public journalism, he seems to stress the importance of deciding how one as a journalist views the public. A more communitarian view sees the public as having the same needs and having the same objectives while the more liberal democratic view looks only at the idea that being of the same community is the only thing common between community members. Both views have their limitations. Informed by Habermans notion of the “deliberating audience” which moves away from the communitarian and liberal democratic views, we decided that we would afford the communities of ward 7 and 8 the opportunity to come in to a space where every individual would be allowed to voice their concern,. With this in mind, we decided to go to both wards and get a sense of the community and its surroundings as well as engage with different people in on the streets and in their homes. Having gone to ward 7, I found that people were very willing to speak about their problems with the hope that maybe this time we something would be done for them. This was the primary way in which we got information from people in ward 7. In ward eight, we held a community meeting in Luvuyo Hall where all residents were invited to come and discuss their problems. The meeting was facilitated by Mbuleli, a resident in Joza who we decided was the ideal person for the facilitation for the meeting as he speaks isiXhosa, the language spoken in the community. In this meeting, the floor was open to anyone wanting to raise issues. Community members were given a fair amount of time to voice their concerns and others to respond in agreement, disagreement or with a related topic. This falls in line with Haas’ emphasis on the community setting the agenda. The way this community was set up allowed the community to do just that.

Follow the issues raised at the community meeting, our group wanted to focus in on one particular issue raised at the meeting. As a group we decided to focus on the theme of children and the youth. At the meeting, individuals expressed concern at the lack of recreational facilities for children in both wards, as well as the problem of orphans who were not being looked after. During the civic mapping process, our group noticed that there were no playgrounds or fields for the children in the wards. We also found children playing on rubbish dumps and amongst sewerage. The overwhelming lack of suitable recreational facilities led us to the decision to focus on this very issue. After much deliberation, it was decided that, as journalists, we could not simply go into our wards and do our respective stories on this issue but that we ought to give back to the community in some way. We decided that our goal of this project would not be to simply produce journalism for the community we were dealing with but to take a solution-based approach to the project. Thus, we decided to host a soccer day for the children in our wards which would address the issue of the lack of recreational facilities and would keep in with our overarching goal of solution-based journalism. We would not simply be Rhodes students giving the children in wards 7 and 8 a fun day, but would be paving the way for such an event to become a regular occurrence in these wards. Our connector in ward 8, Thembalani has been keen to start up his own soccer team for a while and lacked the resources to do so. We believe that this tournament was the start of something that can be ongoing in the community, giving the youth something to do. We also believe Thembelani has been given the boost he needed to start his own soccer team. There is also talk of the youth coming together from the two wards and continuing to play against each other more often. We therefore believe that our objectives were achieved and the soccer tournament was a great success. Both the children and the contacts we worked with the make the tournament happen were both inspired to continue having the tournament every Saturday or once a month. As a group we have since discussed ways to encourage and mentor this process.

We (Simone and Refilwe) produced a soundslide on Home of Joy, an orphanage run by Margaret (Ncgangca in ward 7. In keeping with the theme of our group, we took a solution-based approach to the issues raised about orphans at our community meeting. One of these issues was that people knew of orphans living in ward 8 who had no one to take care of them. During our civic mapping, we discovered that there was an orphanage in ward 7. We thought that taking the story to the community in ward 8 might inspire a community-based solution to the problem, as an alternative to approaching government officials whom the community expressed a great distrust for. The first half of our sound slide focuses solely on Margaret’s story with the aim to bring it to audiences in ward 7 and 8.

Our journalism, as a group, enhanced the processes of democracy and development in Grahamstown by giving the community a voice, taking that voice and helping them to help themselves. We are not in a position to help solve the issues of housing and water, and unfortunately the relevant authorities are not helping either. Thus, by taking a solution-based approach, we helped the community to see that there are ways in which they can help themselves, such as addressing the problem of the lack of recreational facilities by continuing the soccer tournament we held for them.

Our target audience from the conceptualisation of our soundslide was the community members of ward 7 and 8. With this in mind, it was essential that our media output be in isiXhosa given the fact that this is the mother-tongue of the most of the community members. We also thought that it would be important to ask Margaret who she believed should see and hear about her work through the soundslide. She stressed the need for her neighbours and entire neighbourhood to know what she is doing. She felt that very few people know and understand what it is she is doing in here household with so many children. She expressed the hope of something similar developing in her community so that she and that person can work hand in hand in taking care of orphans in the community. We also felt that the audience of ward 8 needed and community based solution for the problem of orphans expressed in the public meeting held by our group in this ward. As mentioned, the community felt like the government did not play an active role in helping them with their problems. Christians et al. puts forward the idea of a journalist having the “facilitative role” in the community where the journalist facilitates discourse for solutions between the community and the government or alternatively identifying other community based solutions, which might come from the deliberation within the community. Leaving the community meeting held in Luvuyo hall, we felt like there was no actual solution brought forward about the orphans in ward 8. Hearing Margarets story, we feel that it may be a possible solution to present to the community and community leaders of ward 8. Margaret started the orphanage out of the goodness of her heart, with no prompting from social workers or the government. Our hope is that the community members of ward 8 will be inspired by Margarets story and look to start something similar as members of the community.

Playing our soundslide back to our production team, some (Non isiXhosa speakers) felt that subtitles should be included, but it is our firm belief that our since our media serves the audience to which it was intended, subtitles become unnecessary and it is therefore the job of our images and to some extent the ambience to convey the message that is delivered in the audio of the soundslide. IsiXhosa speakers who watched the soundslide felt that it was well put together and made perfect sense. From the onset of this assignment we have been informed by Haas’ notion of public journalism and we will continue to strive towards a journalism that does not dictate or simply report matters, but rather allows the community to be an integral part of the process and final production of our soundslides.

A reflection on a different kind of journalism

By Velisiwe Sithole and Nicole Bloch

There are several ideas in the Journalism, Development and Democracy and Critical Media Production (JDD-CMP) courses that definitely brought on a shift in our perceived identities as journalists. Civic mapping, holding public deliberations and focus groups are just a few of the ideas which we previously did not consider to be part of the job description of a journalist. However, did we really know what it meant to be a journalist or media producer? Do we know now what it means today? We are still learning what it is to be a journalist and our identities are constantly shifting.
At first we thought the job was simply a manner of gathering, producing and disseminating information. We would pick a story, preferably one that we really enjoy and sometimes according to a beat, get the information from resources we would think would be reliable, usually already with an angle in our head, and produce the story. In our first years of Journalism and Media Studies we soon learned that there are a whole lot of rules we should adhere to, like the 5 w h (what, where, when, who, why and how), objectivity, news values and ethics. We were trained mostly to fit in with the monitorial role of the journalist to produce the most objective and factual information. In order to get good grades, we would act accordingly, producing factory style journalism which ultimately all look the same. However, we did not think critically yet of the role we play in the media landscape in South Africa and if the way we produce media effective and ‘the only right way’.

Today the new and improved technologies in an era of rapid globalization also require us to change and adapt our identities as journalists. There is a lot more competition in our field and everybody can be a producer and receiver of media for relatively little money or even for free. We believe this is not necessarily a bad thing as it has caused us to reflect on the work and assess the job description. If we really want to stand out from the competition, maybe we should pay a little bit more attention to what the community needs. The ideas from the JDD-CMP course has really shifted our identities as journalists in this regard as a lot more attention is paid to what the needs of the community are. We all want to make a difference in the world as a journalist, but we now realize that it may require us to do more than just to gather, produce and disseminate information. Instead of using community members for a story which may, or may not, make a difference to the readers of print material or viewers of broadcast material, we should rather assist them in community deliberations as well as the problem-solving. This means that our previously perceived identity as the hunter-gatherer journalist may include the descriptions of an organizer, marketer, collaborator, and facilitator. So many students keep saying that civic mapping is not part of our job. Maybe it is. It definitely helped us to understand the community we work in a lot better. And who would have thought that arranging a soccer tournament for the youth in ward 7 and 8 would become part of our job description during the course? Although this was not a specified idea from the JDD-CMP course, it did become established from the proposed idea that journalists should become more active in helping the community help themselves.

Tanni Haas (2007) proposed a theory based around an idea of a public journalism and termed it a ‘public philosophy’, deriving it from what he believes is a link and mutual dependency between journalism and democracy. According to a number of media theorists a genuine democracy depends upon a kind of journalism that is committed to encouraging active citizen participation.
According to Haas the first step in creating a public philosophy is based in the consideration of how journalists should view the public. He believes that public journalism should be viewed within a proceduralist-discursive notion of the ‘deliberating public’. His theory implies that journalists should can help bring a about a public of citizens who subject their own opinions to rational critical evaluation by others. This means, in practice, that journalism should support the maintenance of public space and public life; it must find ways in which the public can address one another and it must enhance the qualities of discourse, all of which are linked to the goals of public journalism. This would result in a consensual problem solving platform and this could be furthered by the encouragement by journalists of citizens to act on the solutions brought about in deliberative spaces. Our group, For78 achieved this by holding a public meeting at Luvuyo community Hall in ward 8 where we invited all community members through extensive advertising via flyers to come and share their problems with us. Our facilitator, a librarian, facilitated this meeting which was primarily in Xhosa to accommodate a majority of people in attendance who could not speak English. Demographics and contact details were taken which showed that the meeting was equally attended by men and women, youth and elderly and employed and unemployed. A number of service delivery issues were raised by the community members and this helped us fulfil the first step in Haas’ suggestions on creating a public philosophy. It was a successful deliberation and many important issues were brought up. Most comments were based on problems rather than solutions. One member of the community however (an ANCYL member) brought up the issue of our journalistic practices and how we (and others at Rhodes University) can help with the problem solving in the community. We did take into consideration that he was talking from a specific perspective in order to protect the ANC and put the blame somewhere else, but we also took his issues to heart and ensured that we would not just use the community members for our stories but give them something in return. We ultimately did this by helping them organize soccer teams and a soccer tournament but we are also expecting more positive outcomes from our other stories.

The second step which Haas suggests involves identifying who is meant to set the agenda for the deliberating public. At our group meeting, we allowed the community members to discuss any issues they felt were important to them freely. In that sense, we allowed them to set their own agenda, making the discussion more democratic. In identifying key issues within their community, they became active partners in the news making process.
Another manner in which we managed to create active participants in the news making process within ward 8 was to enlist the help of a few community members in setting up a soccer day tournament which we hoped would be the beginning of the end of the problem of a lack of recreational facilities within the ward. While we provided sponsorship in the form of balls and even prizes for the winning teams, in both wards, teams were meant to organise themselves and they did so successfully as was made evident by their attendance on the day of the soccer tournament.

One of the biggest difficulties faced by the television students in the production of stories is that it is hard to cover a story that the community wants. Most of the community members do not think of visuals and angles, but we did not want to scrap their ideas from our agenda for a better story. Television students were forced to go the extra mile having to look deeper into issues linked with the problems raised by citizens which resulted for the most part in our story pitches changing at least 3 times a week and our stories moving further and further from the initial complaints put forward by community members. In order to make our stories interesting we had to find interviews that beefed up our packages and when you change the angle of your story to accommodate the concerns of the citizens you are trying to help.

The labour intensive nature of the CMP course did eventually begin to wane on our initial objectives for the course. We had planned to produce two mini documentaries, the first of which would focus on the lack of resources of the wards and the second on our attempts on how to replace or create resources. Our soccer day was meant to be the main focus of our second documentary in that it would help create extracurricular activities for children who had no recreational resources and usually played dangerously in the street or even in garbage dump sites. This was an issue that had been brought up at the public meeting and we had grown very fond of it. However, with each new development of our story as well inability to find time to film children who were usually out of school when we were in lectures, we had to let go of this initial idea.

Another very important issue came up while we were interviewing residents. We realised that one of the main reasons why there is bad service delivery and the location arguably looks like the most deteriorated area in our ward is because the housing project had to be stopped and other projects that required underground piping had to be stopped due to the findings of human remains. We were able to find compelling visuals everywhere from graveyards to inside people’s houses 9where they could describe the location of the ditches under their carpets). A number of community members helped us with our story including our reward 8 catalysts Thembelani who assisted us in making all our interviewees within the wards comfortable in front of the camera. The most difficult aspect of producing our story was getting in touch with municipality members who were willing to comment on our findings or at the very least clarify a few facts.

In terms of whether we have succeeded in encouraging processes of ‘democracy’ and ‘development’ in Grahamstown, we shall only be able to determine that at the end of the course. As of this moment we face a suspicious public, with only a few of them willing to be involved in any democratic process we suggest. A number of people who attended the public meeting said that we should not follow in the footsteps of our predecessors who gathered information for their CMP course and left without really helping the community burning bridges for the following year’s groups such as FOR78. While handing out flyers for our public meeting, a number of people said they had attended similar meetings in the past which had achieved no changes in their communities. We also had a disappointing experience when attempting to foster a relationship of democracy and development with our target audience, the Makana Municipality. In a meeting which was scheduled in order to allow us to show them footage depicting just how the people in the community we were feeling about their problems, the Municipality refused to watch our footage which left us somewhat disgruntled. I f we could not show our productions to those who had the power to make a change, what was the point of public journalism which is meant to help the public?

We had to take an alternate course of action after our failed attempt of holding a focus group with the Makana Municipality. Although our second focus group did not consist of many people, the short documentary caused a two hour deliberation between the people. The story raised many questions and comments, not only because it is a complex story but also because the story has an incredible history, which the focus group members talked about. The anthropologists and a DA counsellor discussed the complications of the history, politics, economics and culture of the location. They pointed out many important aspects that we had not yet thought of. The counsellor gave valuable insights about the different reasons for the frustrations of the community members as well as the municipality. As anthropologists they also discussed and argued the meaning of the graveyard in the location.

In order to give solutions to the problems in the story, we first need to get more information. Unfortunately, the people who are in the position to give us more information and possible solutions are not willing to talk to us or express that they are too busy. We were hoping that we could get some information on the housing project and if it has continued or is going to continue now that the bones have been placed in a communal grave elsewhere. However, not one of our sources knows exactly what is going on. We are now trying to find a source who does know what is happening and try establishing a relationship with this source and the residents so that they can be informed of the plans. We are trying to bridge the lack of communication so that all parties know what to expect from each other.

This means that we are getting involved with government organs and political parties. The municipality was not prepared to give us any valuable input which is unfortunate as they could have given their side of the story. Without them, it looks like the residents in our story really are the victims of bad service delivery because the municipality does not want to help them. However, thanks to some input from the counsellor we got new insight and the information we needed. We do understand that he is part of a political party, but he did give neutral information and insights to the problems from the residents’ point of view as well as the Municipality’s point of view. Collaboration with experts on the topic seems to be extremely valuable, no matter which party they belong to.

This means that we are putting more emphasis on the collaborative role. This refers to the symbiotic relationship between the media and the state. This role requires the cooperation between the media and the powerful, like the government, in an effort to meet the interests of all parties in society. The media can hereby obtain information from the officials more easily and disseminate the information to the public so that the public can receive the views from the officials. The officials can hereby feel less threatened by ungrounded comments from journalists. Besides facilitating communication, the media and the state can also help each other in problem-solving within the community. However, in South Africa there already is a lot of distrust between politicians and journalists. This was highlighted during the Makana Municipality meeting. Although there was some communication about a partnership between the municipality and Rhodes University, this did not go any further then verbal ‘promises’. The Municipal manager acted in a political manner and her behaviour not show any desire for effective communication and problem solving. This is unfortunate as we believe collaboration can be really effective in the effort to communicate, analyse and solve problems in the community in order to fight the social inequalities of our society.

The radical role refers to journalistic practices that entail radical action against power and inequality with the purpose to reform society. The radical role calls for the expression of opinions or ‘sidelining’ of journalists in the fight to eradicate social inequalities. Although certain elements of this role can be useful, our group did not feel that a radial attitude would be effective in the fight for social change. We believe that we must first try to work in collaboration with the members of the community. We could have been a lot more radical during the Makana Municipality meeting as we could have forced the people to watch our documentaries and slideshows. We could have refused to leave the meeting. We could have even edited our film about the behaviour of the municipal manager, make it more sensational by using narration and show it to the public to mobilize radical action against these officials. However, we do want an effective relationship with them. We do not want to burn the bridges that can help us connect all members of our community that can help each other. Radical activism may only result in a monologue while we need a dialogue in order to fight social inequalities.

Although every group must experience problems, we believe that our group handled them exceptionally well. Several roles were allocated to several members of the group in order to create structure and responsibility but almost all group members took on other responsibilities to share the workload. Some members were more extrovert then others and may have had more say but the facilitator ensured that there was a democratic environment. Members of the group helped each other out and discussed the different stories from the different specialisations. We believe everyone had a chance to critique another without taking it personally. This is mainly because of the success of the collaboration within the group for the public meeting and the team work for the soccer tournament. This shows that by helping others, we also helped ourselves.

CMP Critical Reflection

by Tessa Trafford and Prinesha Naidoo (Television)

The notion of ‘public journalism’ as outlined by Haas is personally problematic. In our initial deliberation and outlining of what we, as journalists putting Haas’ theory into real-world practice, wanted to achieve through the practice of public journalism, we feel that we were overly-theoretical and did not take into account the various difficulties that would be faced further into the course.

As journalist we had a ‘grand narrative’ in our minds that seemed perfectly accomplishable at the time that we were deciding on our stories and how we were going to implement ‘public journalism’. As a larger group we held a public meeting in an attempt to get the citizens to aid us in setting a news agenda. This meeting allowed the citizens in ward 8 to raise their concerns and gave us a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the community. However, we feel that here we should add that going into the meeting we, as journalists, already had an agenda. We had discovered that one of the issues in the community was a lack of recreational facilities for children and so we were hoping that this issue would be raised in the public meeting. Luckily it was, and so as a larger group we chose to focus on this problem as it was something that we felt we would be able to help in some way and so give back to the community in which we were working rather than just finding stories and then leaving.

After holding the public meeting we decided that our focus, as a larger group, would be the youth in ward 7 and 8 and our overarching theme would be ‘emptiness’. We also walked around the community several times, talking to various people in an attempt to find out as much as possible about the history of the wards and the various problems in the area. Although we feel that this is some way addressed the notion of what exactly public journalism is and how one would go about putting it into practice, we still feel Haas’ approach is too theoretical and while he cites various examples there is no concrete approach in his writings on how to best put into practice the concept of public journalism. We feel that while we as journalists have come to appreciate the difficulties in researching and producing good work, we are still unsure about what we have left behind in the community, if anything. With this in mind it is difficult to conclusively say whether anything was lost or gained from this experience.

We produced a television piece which centred on ward 8 being built on a former graveyard. The angle that we chose to take was how any attempts at building infrastructure in the community was halted because of the discovery of human remains. This story was particularly pertinent because the area has a rich history dating back to the Battle of Egazini and work was halted because an archaeologist had to be called in to determine the historical significance of the remains. This story was also of interest because culturally, building on the graves of the ancestors is viewed as disrespectful. After showing our piece to our multi-specialisation group we were asked to focus more on the youth angle that had been decided on earlier in the project. In this regard we are going to attempt to speak to younger members of the community and compare their feelings about the ancestors, the history of the ward and how they feel about the lack of infrastructure to an elderly couple who spoke to us about their concerns regarding the above.

Our piece has changed dramatically from when we first set out to shoot it. We started with the concept of looking at how the ward had once been active (in terms of recreation activities) and how this had died out. We, as a larger group, had planned a soccer day and it was to be this day that would form the basis of our follow-up story. However after interviewing Mr and Mrs Mbonde, who have lived in ward 8 for over 40 years, it became clear that our connector (where we originally got the story idea from) had not given us the entire story regarding recreational activities in the ward.

After interviewing the Mbonde’s it became clear that it was more pressing to focus on the human remains found and because of the discovery of these remains the halting of building projects. According to the information that we got the building was stopped in 2007 and has resumed. However, after holding a mini-focus group, we found out that building has resumed although we can find no physical evidence of it. We used various sources for this project-from a DA councillor, to residents of the community to a white sangoma who is also an anthropologist. We feel that we used a wide variety of sources which had added to our production of public journalism in the way that it gives many different people a voice. Our piece could also be said to conform to the notion of public journalism in they way that we as journalists decided on the story and with us focusing on the human remains and housing situation we are reflected a larger community’s concern.

As journalists, we feel that we went into this project a bit blind. We did not go in with a specific idea of what we should be producing and how this would fit into the idea of public journalism. We feel that while we attempted to go into this project with a clearly defined journalistic approach, we were not completely successful in defining our journalistic approach. One of the major issues that we found with this piece is that although the story was chosen differently, once we knew what the story was we went about producing it in a very similar way to how we have produced other pieces during the year. This is problematic for us as professionalising journalists as we were not sure if we were taking the wrong approach or if it was because Haas does not give a clear indication of how to turn theory into practice.

As far as our own identities as journalists have been impacted on in this course we feel that producing this piece has opened our eyes to the multiplicity and complexity of the problems faced not only in ward 8, not only in Grahamtown but in South Africa a s a whole. The frustration that we have experienced trying to contact various officials and the helplessness we felt at times were all, in retrospect, a critical component of this course. We feel that as journalists we have broadened our understanding of the issues in Grahamstown, the politics of local government and we have, in some miniscule way, managed to share in the daily frustration felt by those living in ward 7 and 8. As far as our identities as journalists go both of us have conclusively reached the understanding that there is no such thing as objectivity, yet it is rather difficult to articulate clearly at this point exactly how it has influenced our identities as journalists.

When we first decided to pursue the aforementioned story, it seemed simple. Luvuyo Location in Fingo, Ward 8 had been neglected as it was once used a grave site and so all attempts to upgrade its existing infrastructure were halted due to the discovery of human remains. Following the break in the 2007 construction of RDP houses and flushing toilets after the discovery of human remains and their subsequent removal to a communal grave site construction has yet resume. Through our story, we aimed to find out why construction has yet to resume and how this affects residents of the aforementioned area by showcasing certain aspects of their daily lives.

However, upon further investigation and after conducting focus groups with the Makana Municipality, Anthropologist and Sangoma Penny Bernard, and local Democratic Alliance Councillor Micheal Whisson, we found that, for several reasons, construction in the area has been stopped indefinitely. Firstly, the rightful ownership of the area is a contentious issue as people who believe that the land was forcibly removed from their families during apartheid, have laid claim to it. Another reason as why the construction was stopped is because the area is of historical importance, as it is believed that the remains of those who fought in the battle of Egazini are buried there, which meant that SAHRA had to send archaeologists to excavate and identify the remains. The involvement of a governmental organisation, with its own particular procedures and protocols, in addition to the Makana Municipality and a construction company slowed down hindered any progress.

After speaking with residents, we found that they themselves are largely unaware of the aforementioned issues and as such we decided to include this information in our piece as we are well aware that since we as a group don’t have the means necessary to put enough pressure on the parties concerned to resume construction, we could at least provide the residents with the “full” story. From our understanding the relevant parties and construction process in caught up in protocol, an issue covered in our story in the form of a complaint raised by residents who say that Municipality Officials promise to take up their complaints in town but never get back to them – people are too busy trying to follow the correct procedures and referring issues to a host of different people to actually listen to the citizens complaints. In this regard, we now plan to listen to exactly what worries those living in the area and to tailor our story so that it addresses their concerns. We think that the citizens will be able to better engage with the content we produce if it addresses their questions and that they will best be able to champion their own cause if well informed. This will also enable us to encourage the residents to engage in joint problem-solving and hopefully put pressure on the only institutions can help them, namely SAHRA and the Makana Municipality.

Our focus groups themselves were not characterised by community based problem solving as we sought to get official comment from key actors. The focus group planned with the Makana Municipality did not go as hoped due to a misunderstanding, on their part, of the reason for the meeting. The fact that the Municipality Manager was not willing to speak with us, student journalists from Rhodes University, an institution with considerable weight in the area, unless we went through the proper channels to set up a meeting made realise just how hard it must be for the residents of Luvuyo Location to have their voices heard. This along with the fact that journalists and their investigations were labelled “suspicious” during the meeting made us whether two important tenets of democracy, namely government accountability and freedom of the press, are largely theoretical concepts. The fact that this focus group did not go as hoped, proved detrimental to our piece – the very nature of our story meant that only the municipality could respond to the questions that we need answered. This means that the municipality has considerable editorial influence over us and our story; we are still hopeful of meeting with them and as such have decided to put the footage obtained during the failed focus group on the back burner.

The focus group held, with Bernard and Whisson was more fruitful. While suggestions as to how the residents may tackle the problem emerged both Bernard and Whisson do not live in the community concerned. This is another area in which Haas’ theory pertaining to citizen-based joint problem-solving falls flat, as we are unsure as to whether only those vexed by the problem at hand can engage in the deliberative and problem-solving processes. Judging by Bernard and Whisson’s reaction to our piece as well as the questions raised and answers provided after the viewing, our documentary which mostly followed hard news conventions in addition to personal anecdotes, was effective in gaining audience attention.

In terms of our story, Christian’s collaborative role of the media, whereby, a symbiotic relationship exists between the state and the press, holds merit. Residents of Luvuyo Location, especially those who settled there 40 years ago when the area was a designated transit camp, don’t understand their predicament due to a lack of information pertaining to official Municipality comment and notification. While the media should be more far removed from the state, it is also important that they fulfil their roles as public informants and so the collaborative role is valid in South Africa, especially as the public are often accused by the state of being ill-informed on matters about which they protest. In addition, other CMP groups past and present, have also complained about a lack of information and correspondence between the municipality, the media and the public.

Nevertheless, some autonomy between the state and media is necessary as the media also have an obligation to the public to fulfil a radical watch-dog role and inform them of any wrongdoings on the part of the state. In a sense, public journalism is similar to radical alternative journalism in that both forms of journalism aim to expose failure on the part of the state. Public Journalism is however, driven by ordinary citizens, whereas radical alternative journalism is carried out by those with considerable institutional backing. Radical alternative journalism is also useful both in terms of this course and in the South African context as the failed focus group with the Makana Municipality and much publicised furore surrounding the media tribunal brings the issue of government accountability to fore.