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.
Opening the door to change
Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, October 18, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, October 15, 2010
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.
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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