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.
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.
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