Monday, November 1, 2010
distribution
We returned to Manley Flats to distribute DVDs and held small focus groups in which we played the soundslides and faciltated discussion around them with members of the farm-dwellers community we worked with closely.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Public journalism in action: a group evaluation
Public journalism aims to promote a sense of civic commitment by re-evaluating the way in which we, as journalists, should engage with the public. Rather than seeing the public as passive consumers of the media that we produce, it encourages us to treat citizens as active participants; not providing information to consumers, but rather catalysing conversation amongst citizens. This understanding is aligned with Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism, in terms of which he attempts to produce democratically viable conceptions of the public. During the course of our journalistic processes and outputs we attempted to promote this understanding by addressing people as citizens and potential participants, rather than victims or mere consumers. When we approached the people within our ward, we encouraged them to speak freely about their issues and asked them to form a part of our final media production; in effect these people became the very substance of our media production and it was their opinions and concerns that informed our final product.Our media outputs were not necessarily aimed only at the ‘powers that be’. It was about changing mindsets of people in our area as the issues we are dealing with are common to all South Africans.
We allowed the public to determine the agenda and the stories we pursued. We went for the advocacy approach and combined this with aspects of the public journalism approach. We fell short in letting the people find their own solutions – not all of us gave the citizens the opportunity to find their own solutions. It was not always possible, however, for the community to solve their own problems, because the level of literacy in the ward was low. We took an advocacy approach, as we believed that this would offer more support to the citizens. We took initiatives to bridge the gap with the elite and the people on the ground by talking to the former ourselves.
Blending advocacy journalism with the ‘watchdog’ role of journalism, we wanted to hold the people in power accountable with one of the sound slides. We had to take it upon ourselves because the citizens of the community could not reach those responsible. We contacted the Department of Education in this regard.
Another sound slide took the developmental approach, because it was not clear who was responsible for finding a solution to the problem. This group presented their content to organisations such as Galela Amanzi at Rhodes University and Peter Wylie, a local farmer.
The TV piece used the advocacy approach to give farmers another platform to communicate their concerns. Here we aimed to change the mindset rather than the circumstances. It does not fall under traditional journalism as such; this output was a mixture of advocacy and developmental journalism.
The groups that made the pamphlets took the communication for development approach. The pamphlet about rape aimed to empower parents by providing them with information that is not ordinarily available in their area. The second pamphlet also used an alternative method as it was less a matter of providing newsworthy information, and more about seeking opportunities to create tangible change with the help of local NGOs and businesses.
By approaching this project the way we did, we found the root of the problems before running to the municipality, which is different to what we have been taught as mainstream journalists. Our journalism had its foundations in the personal stories we uncovered in our research. By getting out into the community, we were able to tap into its identity, and in some cases found issues that were harrowing.
We all had good intentions going into the community and to change the reputation we have for exploiting the citizens for our academic gain. Nonetheless, we were still faced with constraints because there are only so many resources we have available to address the problems. Everyone was quite hesitant about the whole project at first, but it came down to how far we were individually willing to commit ourselves.
Once you get to the community, you realise just how real their issues are, to the point that you question your journalistic beliefs about simply getting the story on the page, or providing an ‘objective’ account. It’s about relating to the people. It’s no longer about just handing in the assignment.
One of the core challenges the project presented was the lack of sustainability. We do not have a long period of time to create a problem-solving structure that is sustainable, whether by students or citizens. Ideally, we would like the citizens to take responsibility for their problems on a long-term scale with the foundations we have provided. However, because of a shortage of education and community leaders, there will be natural hindrances to their progress. There were also no citizen journalists in this ward to provide another voice for the citizens.
Although our group all had different issues to cover, there were ways in which we worked together. We faced language barriers when we did our research, but we made sure that group members from different linguistic backgrounds were present to help us out. Aside from the language barrier, there were also occasional cultural differences, that made it difficult for certain groups to communicate both their concerns and aims to the citizens. The fact that each production pair focussed on a different issue ensured that we appealed to multiple target audiences and therefore did not bombard one specific audience with too much content.
Using Grocott’s Mail as a platform for our media outputs gave us more authority and allowed us to get heard by more people. With a wider awareness of the issues we covered, it is more likely that deliberation will occur across Grahamstown.
The TV story showed animosity between the farmers and workers. By reporting their stories, we feel that we are bridging the gap between them and moving towards reconciliation. We can only do this if people are willing and are open to discussion.
We allowed the public to determine the agenda and the stories we pursued. We went for the advocacy approach and combined this with aspects of the public journalism approach. We fell short in letting the people find their own solutions – not all of us gave the citizens the opportunity to find their own solutions. It was not always possible, however, for the community to solve their own problems, because the level of literacy in the ward was low. We took an advocacy approach, as we believed that this would offer more support to the citizens. We took initiatives to bridge the gap with the elite and the people on the ground by talking to the former ourselves.
Blending advocacy journalism with the ‘watchdog’ role of journalism, we wanted to hold the people in power accountable with one of the sound slides. We had to take it upon ourselves because the citizens of the community could not reach those responsible. We contacted the Department of Education in this regard.
Another sound slide took the developmental approach, because it was not clear who was responsible for finding a solution to the problem. This group presented their content to organisations such as Galela Amanzi at Rhodes University and Peter Wylie, a local farmer.
The TV piece used the advocacy approach to give farmers another platform to communicate their concerns. Here we aimed to change the mindset rather than the circumstances. It does not fall under traditional journalism as such; this output was a mixture of advocacy and developmental journalism.
The groups that made the pamphlets took the communication for development approach. The pamphlet about rape aimed to empower parents by providing them with information that is not ordinarily available in their area. The second pamphlet also used an alternative method as it was less a matter of providing newsworthy information, and more about seeking opportunities to create tangible change with the help of local NGOs and businesses.
By approaching this project the way we did, we found the root of the problems before running to the municipality, which is different to what we have been taught as mainstream journalists. Our journalism had its foundations in the personal stories we uncovered in our research. By getting out into the community, we were able to tap into its identity, and in some cases found issues that were harrowing.
We all had good intentions going into the community and to change the reputation we have for exploiting the citizens for our academic gain. Nonetheless, we were still faced with constraints because there are only so many resources we have available to address the problems. Everyone was quite hesitant about the whole project at first, but it came down to how far we were individually willing to commit ourselves.
Once you get to the community, you realise just how real their issues are, to the point that you question your journalistic beliefs about simply getting the story on the page, or providing an ‘objective’ account. It’s about relating to the people. It’s no longer about just handing in the assignment.
One of the core challenges the project presented was the lack of sustainability. We do not have a long period of time to create a problem-solving structure that is sustainable, whether by students or citizens. Ideally, we would like the citizens to take responsibility for their problems on a long-term scale with the foundations we have provided. However, because of a shortage of education and community leaders, there will be natural hindrances to their progress. There were also no citizen journalists in this ward to provide another voice for the citizens.
Although our group all had different issues to cover, there were ways in which we worked together. We faced language barriers when we did our research, but we made sure that group members from different linguistic backgrounds were present to help us out. Aside from the language barrier, there were also occasional cultural differences, that made it difficult for certain groups to communicate both their concerns and aims to the citizens. The fact that each production pair focussed on a different issue ensured that we appealed to multiple target audiences and therefore did not bombard one specific audience with too much content.
Using Grocott’s Mail as a platform for our media outputs gave us more authority and allowed us to get heard by more people. With a wider awareness of the issues we covered, it is more likely that deliberation will occur across Grahamstown.
The TV story showed animosity between the farmers and workers. By reporting their stories, we feel that we are bridging the gap between them and moving towards reconciliation. We can only do this if people are willing and are open to discussion.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Manley Flats Reflection
By Laura Watermeyer and Zinziswa Mani
We have produced an audio slideshow that aims to highlight scholar transport issues within the Manley Flats area, Grahamstown. The transport provided to children in the area is largely unreliable and poorly run. Our media product looks at the issue from the perspective of the principal of Manley Flats Primary School, as well as from the parents of the children affected and the children themselves. What follows is a discussion of this media product in terms of Haas’ public philosophy of public journalism as well as a critical evaluation of the production process.
Public journalism aims to promote a sense of civic commitment by re-evaluating the way in which we, as journalists, should engage with the public. Rather than seeing the public as passive consumers of the media that we produce, it encourages us to treat citizens as active participants; not providing information to consumers, but rather catalysing conversation amongst citizens. This understanding is aligned with Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism, in terms of which he attempts to produce democratically viable conceptions of the public. During the course of our journalistic processes and outputs we attempted to promote this understanding by addressing people as citizens and potential participants, rather than victims or mere consumers. When we approached the people within our ward, we encouraged them to speak freely about their issues and asked them to form a part of our final media production; in effect these people became the very substance of our media production and it was their opinions and concerns that informed our final product.
This was our intention at the outset and informed our objectives for our media product, namely to provide these people with a platform to address their issues and provide a voice for the voiceless. We think that these objectives have shown themselves to be realistic and measurable; however at the start of this process we were doubtful as to whether or not we would be able to take the issues of the community to a larger audience. This larger audience then formed the target audience to whom we wished to show our final media product; namely the Department of Education, who we understood to be in a position to facilitate change, and then other small businesses who we hoped may contribute toward the scholar transport problems within the Manley Flats area.
Haas suggests that journalists should create an open-ended public sphere to which all citizens have access and in which topics of concern can be openly articulated amongst the public, providing support for public discourse and deliberation. Due to the very rural location of our ward this posed an immediate challenge, particularly because we have chosen to work in a small farming community that is very detached from the mainstream media of Grahamstown. There has been little to no coverage of their particular area or of their concerns and as such we were faced with the challenge of trying to provide these citizens with a platform from which they could address and vocalize their issues and enable their opinions to be articulated amongst the public. It was very important to us that we could enable this very isolated and largely neglected community to become an active part of the public-sphere.
Haas’ approach is that journalists need to engage citizens as active participants in the news making process. This means that public journalists should share their authority with citizens by instituting various formal and informal means of involving citizens in the setting of news agendas; in effect listening to the public to help set a citizens news agenda. We made use of certain methods and techniques that we thought would be key in identifying problems of concern to local residents and that we thought would involve citizens in the setting of our news agenda. We involved citizens in in-depth interviews, for example we approached the principle of the local, rural school Manley Flats Primary School, and we encouraged him to talk freely about his concerns and thoughts. We also approached members of the community and conducted very informal meetings with them in their homes. We felt that this was the best way of allowing these people to talk freely and openly with us without feeling intimidated or uncertain of their views and opinions. Haas contends that journalists should rather see the public in terms of multiple social groups with different, and potentially conflicting, concerns. Thus, Haas contends that journalists should make every effort to keep the process of public deliberation as open and inclusive as possible, lessening the impact of social inequality and the difficulty of some citizens to participate on an equal footing. It is for this very reason, then, that we adopted this approach, we understood that a community of people who are very rural, and mostly only capable of speaking isiXhosa, would feel intimidated by a large community meeting where they may have felt that their issues were insignificant.
Haas puts forward a model that outlines the role ordinary citizens, experts, government officials and journalists should play in the problem solving process. He argues that while some problems may be potentially resolvable by citizens themselves, other problems may require active engagement and collaboration with experts and government officials. Our issue was one that centered on scholar transport and the major issues that stem from scholar transport within a very rural area. This is an issue that affects the people within the area and unfortunately is not one that they can deal with themselves. They are forced to make use of the government provided scholar transport that is inconsistent and poorly run. As a direct result of this their children and those of neighbouring communities are forced to walk long distances to reach their place of education. Further, they often have to walk in poor weather conditions or are unable to go to school at all, limiting their access to education. This is an obvious problem that needs to be addressed by the government and by the Department of Education. Thus, the issue clearly required some active engagement and collaboration with the people in power. What we did find very rewarding was the fact that we could take our media product to the Department of Education and we received some very positive assistance and comment from the Managing Director. Although we still have to wait to see what actually comes from the follow up interviews, etc., it was still very positive to know that we were able to provide a platform to address an issue that is so often overlooked in the mainstream media. What was even better was that we were able to provide citizens, who are so often excluded and neglected in terms of their actual concerns and problems, with the opportunity to actively participate in the public sphere.
We think that we adopted a largely facilitative approach to how we participated with the communities and in the production of our media product. However, this approach was coupled with advocacy journalism; an advocate journalist speaks or pleads on behalf of another, giving the other a face and a voice. Thus, we attempted to improve the quality of public life and add to democracy. We do feel as though the media we produced has enhanced the process of development and democracy within Grahamstown. The people within this community have been largely overlooked by Grahamstown’s mainstream media and this obviously has dire effects on their involvement and consciousness of democratic processes. By bringing their concerns to public attention and actively making people aware of their issues we are also actively involving them in democratic process and making them a component of the public sphere. We have achieved this by making their concerns visible to a much larger community of people, via Grocott’s Mail and Grocott’s Mail Online for example. In effect, we have attempted to put a previously overlooked community of people in contact with civil society.
The ideas that were raised in our JDD and CMP class have impacted immensely on our identities as young professional journalists. It made us realise that we shouldn’t always push our own news agenda or the agenda that is imposed upon us by mainstream media organisations. Rather, we should actively try to let people tell their stories the way they want and give them a voice. It made us realise that sometimes we can’t always be objective when reporting on other people’s lives; sometimes elements of subjectivity can bring much needed dimension to a story, provided that the depiction is accurate. This course made us realise that we shouldn’t always cover stories in our own way; we should cover stories in a way that enables citizens to reflect on their different, potentially conflicting, concerns and interests. Rather than simply slipping into a monotorial role of journalism, where we serve to observe and report on the operation of the state, we were forced to think outside the box. For the first time our perceptions of “good old-fashioned journalism” were challenged and found wanting.
It no longer seems good enough to sit on the sidelines and conduct impartial, objective interviews. Rather, there is a desire to search for a story and tell it in a way that will facilitate change. We realise the need of actively bringing much needed attention to those sectors of our community that need our help in telling their story and surely this is our purpose as journalists who are challenged with the role of advancing democracy and development?
How far we've come
By Jade Smith (W&E) and Tselane Moiloa (Design)
Our ward was difficult to cover because of its location – the area is sparsely populated and consists mainly of farms. Nonetheless, we attempted to implement some of the principles of Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism. What was most important to us was allowing the public to set their own news agenda. The issues raised by the people in Ward 4 are not attended to by their ward councillor, nor are they attended to by anyone else more powerful or affluent. It was vital that they got the chance to tell somebody what was important to them. By letting the community members raise the issues that concerned them most, we had the opportunity to take their side, as Haas suggests, and find someone in power who could best solve their problems, or at least make influential people aware of these issues. By going out to the area with an open mind, we let the citizens dictate what we were going to write about (replacing the news agenda with a community agenda, as per Haas’s recommendation), and that gave us new angles to work with, to freshen up the stories that we were used to. This was advantageous to us, as well as the community in that their problems would be dealt with in some way, even if they were not resolved.
Haas emphasises that public journalists should create multiple public spheres for deliberation, and ensure that inequalities are not propagated within them. We did not have a public meeting (which would have led to key deliberation in the multiple spheres) but spoke to people with different roles in the community so that we would reach a range of social strata. While the farmers spoke about their issues, farm workers had their own, as did the principal of a local school. Different issues were pursued by different production groups (eg. TV students took farming, WED groups educational issues and Radio/Photojourn students basic amenities). This allowed us to cover a range of issues, and this way nobody in the community would feel marginalised, that their voices were not being heard.
Taking a non-objective approach (as Haas expects public journalists to do), proved much more beneficial to the community than an objective one, especially in our ward. We could just have reported on the issues we uncovered and left it there, as mainstream journalists are inclined to do. We realised, however, that in some cases the citizens could help themselves, but needed some external help that we could provide. Having said that, we did not seek to impose ourselves on them, but asked for their input on what to include in the media we produced, and got feedback from them about what could be improved. The key to Haas’s public philosophy is to create a problem-solving structure that the citizens can sustain themselves. At the school parents’ meeting that we attended, the parents discussed issues that their children were having, and the (female) principal also contributed, as they had common interests – the pupils. This was a sphere of deliberation that the community already had in place. From this meeting we learnt of problem areas in the community that parents did not know how to deal with. Information about these problems is freely available to us at Rhodes and on the Internet, so it only required a bit of research to bring this information to the people that needed it, but could not access it. Equipping parents with this information provides the community with a sustainable resource which will grow as it is spread by word of mouth.
Because we took such a hands-on approach, nothing was lost in employing public journalism methods, other than the municipality’s respect. Taking a mainstream approach would seem callous, as such a little bit of work (gathering information) can make a big difference in the community, so why not do it? This attitude helped the community, and that adds more value to society than writing an article for coursework requirements or to sell a commercial newspaper.
------
The idea of using ordinary people as sources was alien to us as student journalists – usually our first port of call is a person in authority (for example a lecturer, the municipality spokesperson, or head of organisation). We have been trained not to report on something unless it is a fact. Suddenly we had to use people’s opinions to form our news agenda. And not even the opinions of people in high places. This was the collaborative role in the opposite direction: instead of collaborating with the people in power, we were working with citizens of the community.
We have been educated in the ways of the monitorial role of journalism, so it was intimidating to venture out into the unknown areas of the municipality. Being removed from our comfort zones of campus and surrounds was character-building. Initially, we delved into the course with the idea that we are really only just student journalists, with no resources to help these people; hence most of us felt like we would be exploiting the people of Grahamstown. However, with all the effort that has been put into the production of the media outputs, we became attached to the community and promoting their agenda.
We didn’t know what to expect and had to think on our feet about how to approach people we came across, what questions to ask, and how to deal with various reactions to our project. In retrospect, this is much more effective journalism training than putting us in an office and making us phone sources. The approaches the JDD-CMP course has forced us to take has created another dimension to our journalism education that we would not have got otherwise.
JDD-CMP has naturalised another perspective in our minds – the “what would the citizens do” angle. It makes sense. The community reads our productions, so we need to be sensitive to what they want to read, not force our ‘newsworthy’ content on them. Instead of getting the five W’s and an H and running back to our computers to bang out the story, we have become sympathetic to the community’s needs. Instead of feeling the relief that comes with meeting a deadline, there is something else that nags at us. We want to know that our media output is going to achieve something. A by-line is not enough. We want a result.
-----
Once we heard about the issues our allocated ward community was facing, we decided our objectives should be to disseminate information to people who needed it most. We are only student journalists after all, and we cannot solve problems like alien plants, lack of water, or rape. We used a non-mainstream approach of making pamphlets to educate our target audience (parents of schoolchildren) about steps to follow if their child is raped. It also included phone numbers of relevant organisations: police, Child Welfare, Childline, AIDS helpline, and the Raphael Centre. This would serve the community much better than a big piece of paper stuck on the wall telling them something they already know. The pamphlets could be sent home with the pupils and therefore reach the intended audience (if all goes well). They are small, so can be carried around (even between households).
We had a focused, utilitarian approach – bring the message across to the parents. Even though the pamphlet did not look as eye-catching as some wall newspapers produced by the rest of the class, a lot of work went into it. The content had to be researched, and the language had to be simple, as most parents had not received much education. The English content was then translated into isiXhosa, the mother tongue of the target audience.
The design part of this project was not easy as we thought it would be. The mere fact that we were not putting together a wall newspaper introduced other challenges. While there was no way we could document sodomy and sexual abuse without being explicit and possibly offending, what was challenging was how we would introduce the topic to this conservative community. These are some of the factors that were considered when designing the pamphlet. Based on our budget constraints, we decided that we would print in black and white for cost efficiency as we wanted to print in bulk and not just eight copies as has been done with the newspaper. On the design specifically, we decided on being as basic and simple as possible. This limited how far we could go with making it visually appealing in terms of colour. At this point, the important thing to us has been to facilitate the necessary information to the parents and slowly help towards decreasing the rate of rape and sexual abuse among the children. While it may not grab as much attention as a wall newspaper, we are confident that it brought the message across.
We did interviews for research. Most crucial was a one-on-one interview with a HIV counsellor at the Raphael Centre about the steps to take when a child has been raped. This made up the majority of our pamphlet’s content. We made sure to include details that the teachers asked for. For example, a girl was raped and her mother washed her body and clothes, so the police could not gather evidence for the case. Not washing your child was a prominent point in the pamphlet, and we took care to include the reasons for this. We got the latest rape statistics from a document which came from the SAPS website. The pamphlet provided statistics for Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape and South Africa. Our motivation was that we wanted to make it relevant to our Manley Flats audience, but generalised enough that it could be reproduced for parents in other areas, as the problem of rape is widespread. People we have spoken to thus far agree that we could distribute this widely.
Other than educating parents, we hope that this will encourage the community to talk amongst themselves about rape, as it is regarded as somewhat taboo. Rapes are reported to the principal, not the police. We have not received feedback from the parents for logistical reasons (it is difficult to reach all their houses). Based on this, we went around asking parents on campus (ie kitchen staff, housekeeping etc) for general thoughts and feedback about the pamphlet because they are parents too. The teachers have assured us that our production will be very helpful as a catalyst for change in the community. They especially liked our list of phone numbers, saying that parents will be able to get help faster on weekends (because the school is closed, so they can’t report rape). Bringing all the phone numbers together is useful for the parents as they can keep them as an easy reference. One teacher added that we could improve on our pamphlet by including a section of signs to look out for to tell if your child has been raped. An example of this would be that the child does not want the parent to touch them at bath time.
Our ward was difficult to cover because of its location – the area is sparsely populated and consists mainly of farms. Nonetheless, we attempted to implement some of the principles of Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism. What was most important to us was allowing the public to set their own news agenda. The issues raised by the people in Ward 4 are not attended to by their ward councillor, nor are they attended to by anyone else more powerful or affluent. It was vital that they got the chance to tell somebody what was important to them. By letting the community members raise the issues that concerned them most, we had the opportunity to take their side, as Haas suggests, and find someone in power who could best solve their problems, or at least make influential people aware of these issues. By going out to the area with an open mind, we let the citizens dictate what we were going to write about (replacing the news agenda with a community agenda, as per Haas’s recommendation), and that gave us new angles to work with, to freshen up the stories that we were used to. This was advantageous to us, as well as the community in that their problems would be dealt with in some way, even if they were not resolved.
Haas emphasises that public journalists should create multiple public spheres for deliberation, and ensure that inequalities are not propagated within them. We did not have a public meeting (which would have led to key deliberation in the multiple spheres) but spoke to people with different roles in the community so that we would reach a range of social strata. While the farmers spoke about their issues, farm workers had their own, as did the principal of a local school. Different issues were pursued by different production groups (eg. TV students took farming, WED groups educational issues and Radio/Photojourn students basic amenities). This allowed us to cover a range of issues, and this way nobody in the community would feel marginalised, that their voices were not being heard.
Taking a non-objective approach (as Haas expects public journalists to do), proved much more beneficial to the community than an objective one, especially in our ward. We could just have reported on the issues we uncovered and left it there, as mainstream journalists are inclined to do. We realised, however, that in some cases the citizens could help themselves, but needed some external help that we could provide. Having said that, we did not seek to impose ourselves on them, but asked for their input on what to include in the media we produced, and got feedback from them about what could be improved. The key to Haas’s public philosophy is to create a problem-solving structure that the citizens can sustain themselves. At the school parents’ meeting that we attended, the parents discussed issues that their children were having, and the (female) principal also contributed, as they had common interests – the pupils. This was a sphere of deliberation that the community already had in place. From this meeting we learnt of problem areas in the community that parents did not know how to deal with. Information about these problems is freely available to us at Rhodes and on the Internet, so it only required a bit of research to bring this information to the people that needed it, but could not access it. Equipping parents with this information provides the community with a sustainable resource which will grow as it is spread by word of mouth.
Because we took such a hands-on approach, nothing was lost in employing public journalism methods, other than the municipality’s respect. Taking a mainstream approach would seem callous, as such a little bit of work (gathering information) can make a big difference in the community, so why not do it? This attitude helped the community, and that adds more value to society than writing an article for coursework requirements or to sell a commercial newspaper.
------
The idea of using ordinary people as sources was alien to us as student journalists – usually our first port of call is a person in authority (for example a lecturer, the municipality spokesperson, or head of organisation). We have been trained not to report on something unless it is a fact. Suddenly we had to use people’s opinions to form our news agenda. And not even the opinions of people in high places. This was the collaborative role in the opposite direction: instead of collaborating with the people in power, we were working with citizens of the community.
We have been educated in the ways of the monitorial role of journalism, so it was intimidating to venture out into the unknown areas of the municipality. Being removed from our comfort zones of campus and surrounds was character-building. Initially, we delved into the course with the idea that we are really only just student journalists, with no resources to help these people; hence most of us felt like we would be exploiting the people of Grahamstown. However, with all the effort that has been put into the production of the media outputs, we became attached to the community and promoting their agenda.
We didn’t know what to expect and had to think on our feet about how to approach people we came across, what questions to ask, and how to deal with various reactions to our project. In retrospect, this is much more effective journalism training than putting us in an office and making us phone sources. The approaches the JDD-CMP course has forced us to take has created another dimension to our journalism education that we would not have got otherwise.
JDD-CMP has naturalised another perspective in our minds – the “what would the citizens do” angle. It makes sense. The community reads our productions, so we need to be sensitive to what they want to read, not force our ‘newsworthy’ content on them. Instead of getting the five W’s and an H and running back to our computers to bang out the story, we have become sympathetic to the community’s needs. Instead of feeling the relief that comes with meeting a deadline, there is something else that nags at us. We want to know that our media output is going to achieve something. A by-line is not enough. We want a result.
-----
Once we heard about the issues our allocated ward community was facing, we decided our objectives should be to disseminate information to people who needed it most. We are only student journalists after all, and we cannot solve problems like alien plants, lack of water, or rape. We used a non-mainstream approach of making pamphlets to educate our target audience (parents of schoolchildren) about steps to follow if their child is raped. It also included phone numbers of relevant organisations: police, Child Welfare, Childline, AIDS helpline, and the Raphael Centre. This would serve the community much better than a big piece of paper stuck on the wall telling them something they already know. The pamphlets could be sent home with the pupils and therefore reach the intended audience (if all goes well). They are small, so can be carried around (even between households).
We had a focused, utilitarian approach – bring the message across to the parents. Even though the pamphlet did not look as eye-catching as some wall newspapers produced by the rest of the class, a lot of work went into it. The content had to be researched, and the language had to be simple, as most parents had not received much education. The English content was then translated into isiXhosa, the mother tongue of the target audience.
The design part of this project was not easy as we thought it would be. The mere fact that we were not putting together a wall newspaper introduced other challenges. While there was no way we could document sodomy and sexual abuse without being explicit and possibly offending, what was challenging was how we would introduce the topic to this conservative community. These are some of the factors that were considered when designing the pamphlet. Based on our budget constraints, we decided that we would print in black and white for cost efficiency as we wanted to print in bulk and not just eight copies as has been done with the newspaper. On the design specifically, we decided on being as basic and simple as possible. This limited how far we could go with making it visually appealing in terms of colour. At this point, the important thing to us has been to facilitate the necessary information to the parents and slowly help towards decreasing the rate of rape and sexual abuse among the children. While it may not grab as much attention as a wall newspaper, we are confident that it brought the message across.
We did interviews for research. Most crucial was a one-on-one interview with a HIV counsellor at the Raphael Centre about the steps to take when a child has been raped. This made up the majority of our pamphlet’s content. We made sure to include details that the teachers asked for. For example, a girl was raped and her mother washed her body and clothes, so the police could not gather evidence for the case. Not washing your child was a prominent point in the pamphlet, and we took care to include the reasons for this. We got the latest rape statistics from a document which came from the SAPS website. The pamphlet provided statistics for Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape and South Africa. Our motivation was that we wanted to make it relevant to our Manley Flats audience, but generalised enough that it could be reproduced for parents in other areas, as the problem of rape is widespread. People we have spoken to thus far agree that we could distribute this widely.
Other than educating parents, we hope that this will encourage the community to talk amongst themselves about rape, as it is regarded as somewhat taboo. Rapes are reported to the principal, not the police. We have not received feedback from the parents for logistical reasons (it is difficult to reach all their houses). Based on this, we went around asking parents on campus (ie kitchen staff, housekeeping etc) for general thoughts and feedback about the pamphlet because they are parents too. The teachers have assured us that our production will be very helpful as a catalyst for change in the community. They especially liked our list of phone numbers, saying that parents will be able to get help faster on weekends (because the school is closed, so they can’t report rape). Bringing all the phone numbers together is useful for the parents as they can keep them as an easy reference. One teacher added that we could improve on our pamphlet by including a section of signs to look out for to tell if your child has been raped. An example of this would be that the child does not want the parent to touch them at bath time.
A first, slightly tentative critical evaluation
Amanda Masuku and Barry Sierra
Haas discusses the concept that topics of common concern are often problematic because in reality there will be naturally forming inequalities amongst different social groups (Haas, 2007). We found this to be especially prevalent in ward 4, specifically with some of our earlier story ideas on farming, waste management and water quality. We felt that the needs of the people and the action of local government where not in-line with each other. Similarly, there was very little consensus on what action could be taken to alleviate such problems; this was largely due to the presence of naturally forming inequalities as local government and established farmers were struggling to agree on important topics, this was the biggest surprise that came up during the earlier focus groups. And, there was very little that our journalism could due to change the perceptions of opposing parties.
Haas, like Fraser, argues that multiple discursive domains would provide distinct social groups with the ability to frame issues of interest to them, which can then be subjected to critical examination by other groups (Haas, 2007). The fact that we introduced ourselves to different layers of these domains meant that we needed to re-evaluate the different needs of the different domains. For example, local government, farm owners and farm workers often had contrasting views on what needed to be done and how it could be achieved. As journalists, through the public journalism lens, we needed to be able to empathise with the different groups and frame our issues in relation to the needs of everyone.
Haas argues that journalist’s primary aim should be to create a public, deliberating sphere that is not restricted by hegemonic interests or commercial news-agenda setting. Instead, journalists should share their authority with the public by instituting various formal and informal procedures in agenda-setting as well as providing a public discourse that highlights the benefits of both face-to-face interaction and mass-mediated deliberation (Haas, 2007). This was important as it allowed us to gain a new perspective on what our journalism could mean for the people. The nature of our production (which will be discussed in greater detail at a later stage) meant that we did not need to rely on hegemonic interest or a commercial news-agenda. We were relatively free when it came to framing our issues. Furthermore, as part of the public journalism method, we found that face-to-face interaction was an invaluable method of gaining information about the issues we were looking into. When discussing areas of interest with people they seemed far more open and honest when we highlighted the fact that we were just trying to find out their concerns and we were not operating from an official standpoint.
The biggest impact has been seeing that journalism is a varied and evolving field. Journalism has many functions in modern society but mainstream media is largely about a ‘check and balance’ on government, news and entertainment. But journalism can also be used for social change and advocacy. We live in a viciously unequal world and our responsibility as journalists is first and foremost to the people of society. However, necessary changes are often difficult to enact as they require the direct action of people and organisations that are hindered by bureaucratic problems. Therefore, change is often slow and difficult to predict. The journalism we produced and the way we produced it made us see that change can, and should, come from the people and we have the opportunity to be a part of that change. We noticed in the course of our research that it was often just ordinary citizens that were more concerned with the plight of the people than the very councillors and representatives that are meant to serve the people. Consequently, working with concerned citizens in a participatory manner was far more successful than trying to enact changes through local government.
The research phase of this project had important implications for the way in which we set our objectives, methods and style of our media production. Firstly, Ward 4 is largely a rural, farming community and their needs are influenced by the environment in which they live. For example, water scarcity is often more acute in these areas than in the urban wards. Secondly, during the planning of the initial public meetings and civic mapping, we were constantly battling with the official sources (local government) needed for our stories. Farming and water issues are directly related to the actions taken by local government. For example, emerging farmers cannot survive without government and help when it comes to funding, farming resources and training not much has been done to assist them. The frustration that came from local government’s inability to help us, or even try to discuss these problems in any depth, made us review the type of journalism we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.
We had a lot of story ideas at the beginning of the media production phase of the course; stories on farming and livestock theft, water quality, ward development, and waste management. But all of these stories, by their very nature, relied on local government. We thus decided to so a story on the Hobbiton Outdoor Education Centre at Fairewood. There were a few reasons for this but the most important one is that we noticed that it was a real opportunity to do some good in the community and establish relationships between the youth of ward 4, Hobbiton and local NGO’s and community organisations. Thus, our objectives were to help the children in ward 4 by advertising Hobbiton to local organisations and business and to gain funding for workshops and activities. In this regard our journalism can best be defined as advocacy journalism because we aimed to “speak or plead on behalf of another, giving the other a face and a voice.” (Careless, S. 2000: 1). We decided that the best way to do this was not through a wall newspaper because there were no locations suitable for this. Instead we created a pamphlet that was distributed to local charities, NGO’s and businesses. Our objective for the pamphlet was to create a professional and visually attractive advertisement that could introduce potential donors to Hobbiton, the youth of ward 4 and potential activities they could be involved in. Although our objectives were clearly thought through and a product of the evolution of the project, we faced other problems as our desire to be a catalyst for change relied on business people and organisations, instead of the mobilisation of the community. However, as most of the work done for ward 4 has focused on youth, we decided it was a worthwhile risk.
As previously mentioned, our pamphlet is largely an advertisement for Hobbiton but it has specific goals; firstly, to attract attention to Hobbiton’s community involvement and secondly, to highlight issues of particular concern in ward 4. The pamphlet provided information on Hobbiton in the form of its vision, history and current programmes. But we also included information on the GOOD project and quotes by Josh Paton, the manager of Hobbiton at Fairewood. Our advocacy-based journalism was aimed at aiding development in ward 4. Hobbiton provides a perfect avenue for community development because that is its primary goal as an organisation. Whilst they do provide corporate packages, often these are done to help fund future community-based projects. We felt that our involvement in the relationship between Hobbiton, local communities and organisations could help foster lasting links between different sectors of people living in and around Grahamstown. In this regard, the journalism we produced was alternative for us because we were taking a fresh look at what our journalism could do for the people of ward 4. It was less a matter of providing news-worthy information and more about seeking out opportunities to create tangible change for a local community that relies so heavily on the influence of local government to create any meaningful change in their lives.
We feel that the media we produced was carefully tailored to the specific requirements of our vision for the production phase of this course. The pamphlet was meant to provide important information on what organisations could do to assist the youth of ward 4. Visual elements played an important role in this process; we needed the pamphlet to attract attention to the issues at hand but it needed to look professional and comprehensive because it was being distributed to business people and organisations that would be providing capital for our products and our pamphlet and presentation of it needed to inspire confidence in the aims of the program.
Our document research was quite thorough as we had compiled a number of different stories, even though we eventually decided on doing the story on Hobbiton at Fairewood. We relied on interviews, observations and focus groups to provide the bulk of our initial material. We also tried to make sure that we had a variety of sources that articulated the perceptions of the community across different groups of people. We felt that whatever journalism we would end up producing needed to be balanced, and as journalists we needed to be able to have a holistic understanding of the issues that were being raised during the research phases of the project.
One of the biggest disappointments of our ward is that we were unable to uncover any citizen journalists in the rural areas and although we tried to give a voice to their concerns, it was done through our conception of the problems they face. I think some of the other stories in our group were able to effectively showcase the issues; this is especially true of the TV pieces and the audio slideshows which were able to visually illustrate the stories and this had a far more direct and moving impact. For the research on farming stories and water quality we attempted to work with a variety of ‘official sources’ but it was a difficult operation trying to get the relevant material from them. Local NGO’s and advocacy groups were far more helpful but they are also far more independent than local government and do therefore not struggle with the same bureaucratic problems.
We found two farm schools in our area, one taught up to grade 7 while the other taught up to grade 4. After completing these grades the children are supposed to go into the township schools in Grahamstown for secondary education. This does not happen with all of them as many drop out and go work on the farms or just loiter. We wanted the people of ward 4 to understand that Hobbition is not just a place in their ward but a place that is there to serve them as well. Hobbiton teaches many skills and our idea was that with more funding, programmes that involve the children of those schools could be started so that should they not be able to continue to secondary level, they can find other positive ways of contributing to society.
Our production was not primarily targeted at the citizens but more at the business sector in order to highlight education in the area so that they can allocate funds that will boost all forms of education in that area. We chose to target the businesses because there is not much that the citizens can do for themselves with regards to education when they do not have funding, so the first step was to provide them with resources.. The solutions that we highlighted depend on us securing enough funding to assist Hobbiton because already, they do provide free services and if we could get them more money, they could extend their services to include more children.
The pamphlet we created included both information about the place and news on what they have done, projects that they are running that benefit the community and what our aim is in creating such a pamphlet. We believe that this structure made it more engaging because it had small bursts of information with pictures, interesting shapes and colours to attract the reader and show that this was about children’s education and recreation because another issue that was raised in the ward was that of children having nothing constructive to do which resulted in then engaging in under-age drinking and inappropriate sexual acts. We also included quotes that we pulled out and highlighted so that if there is nothing else that you read, you understand the aim of the production.
Since we were only able to begin distributing the pamphlets this week, it is a bit too soon to tell if they are effective but because we engage with the people as we distributed, one could say that we are getting positive feedback because many NGO’s seen interested in working with Hobbiton.
Our group was quite independent because firstly, we deviated from the original brief while still maintaining the main objectives. While we were researching other stories, we found that working with the municipality was near impossible because they we constantly redirecting us and not giving solid answers. We then thought it best to find other ways in which to help the community help itself. What we lost from not involving the government is probably not much because the ward councillor of that area doesn’t even go there as often as he should and any help that he sends them cannot be relied upon because things like the water truck come at very erratic times. What we gained however is a stronger bond in the community because everything that we are working with is already a part of that community so they are essentially building themselves up.
Initially, we divided our group in to two parts so there was 1 person from each specialization in each half. A radio person was then paired with a photographer while a writer worked with a designer. The photographer, although working primarily with the radio people, would also work with the WED groups. Each group then worked at its own pace and was largely independent but made sure to meet all the set deadlines. We discussed our story ideas so that groups didn’t clash and so that we could help each other if we knew something that would benefit the other groups. We have been fortunate enough to have a hard working group so we have not had problems with people not contributing equally but we have had colleagues who have went beyond their call of duty countless times.
The collaborative role for journalism in democratic societies is basically that in a democratic society, the role of a journalist is not to merely report from the sidelines but to act as a bridge between the public and the government. Our role is to aid the government in reaching all the citizens since everyone’s vote counts the same. It is also to give a voice to everyone so that certain communities are not marginalized and everyone basically has the same opportunities from the government. The relationship between the collaborative role and development journalism is the public and making sure that every person’s voice is heard. With development journalism, one works with marginalized and potentially marginalized people and gives them a voice. One also works with the government to ensure that they hear the voices of all the people and actually do something about it. Essentially, the crux of the relationship lies in accountability, the citizens, journalists and government holding each other accountable.
Haas discusses the concept that topics of common concern are often problematic because in reality there will be naturally forming inequalities amongst different social groups (Haas, 2007). We found this to be especially prevalent in ward 4, specifically with some of our earlier story ideas on farming, waste management and water quality. We felt that the needs of the people and the action of local government where not in-line with each other. Similarly, there was very little consensus on what action could be taken to alleviate such problems; this was largely due to the presence of naturally forming inequalities as local government and established farmers were struggling to agree on important topics, this was the biggest surprise that came up during the earlier focus groups. And, there was very little that our journalism could due to change the perceptions of opposing parties.
Haas, like Fraser, argues that multiple discursive domains would provide distinct social groups with the ability to frame issues of interest to them, which can then be subjected to critical examination by other groups (Haas, 2007). The fact that we introduced ourselves to different layers of these domains meant that we needed to re-evaluate the different needs of the different domains. For example, local government, farm owners and farm workers often had contrasting views on what needed to be done and how it could be achieved. As journalists, through the public journalism lens, we needed to be able to empathise with the different groups and frame our issues in relation to the needs of everyone.
Haas argues that journalist’s primary aim should be to create a public, deliberating sphere that is not restricted by hegemonic interests or commercial news-agenda setting. Instead, journalists should share their authority with the public by instituting various formal and informal procedures in agenda-setting as well as providing a public discourse that highlights the benefits of both face-to-face interaction and mass-mediated deliberation (Haas, 2007). This was important as it allowed us to gain a new perspective on what our journalism could mean for the people. The nature of our production (which will be discussed in greater detail at a later stage) meant that we did not need to rely on hegemonic interest or a commercial news-agenda. We were relatively free when it came to framing our issues. Furthermore, as part of the public journalism method, we found that face-to-face interaction was an invaluable method of gaining information about the issues we were looking into. When discussing areas of interest with people they seemed far more open and honest when we highlighted the fact that we were just trying to find out their concerns and we were not operating from an official standpoint.
The biggest impact has been seeing that journalism is a varied and evolving field. Journalism has many functions in modern society but mainstream media is largely about a ‘check and balance’ on government, news and entertainment. But journalism can also be used for social change and advocacy. We live in a viciously unequal world and our responsibility as journalists is first and foremost to the people of society. However, necessary changes are often difficult to enact as they require the direct action of people and organisations that are hindered by bureaucratic problems. Therefore, change is often slow and difficult to predict. The journalism we produced and the way we produced it made us see that change can, and should, come from the people and we have the opportunity to be a part of that change. We noticed in the course of our research that it was often just ordinary citizens that were more concerned with the plight of the people than the very councillors and representatives that are meant to serve the people. Consequently, working with concerned citizens in a participatory manner was far more successful than trying to enact changes through local government.
The research phase of this project had important implications for the way in which we set our objectives, methods and style of our media production. Firstly, Ward 4 is largely a rural, farming community and their needs are influenced by the environment in which they live. For example, water scarcity is often more acute in these areas than in the urban wards. Secondly, during the planning of the initial public meetings and civic mapping, we were constantly battling with the official sources (local government) needed for our stories. Farming and water issues are directly related to the actions taken by local government. For example, emerging farmers cannot survive without government and help when it comes to funding, farming resources and training not much has been done to assist them. The frustration that came from local government’s inability to help us, or even try to discuss these problems in any depth, made us review the type of journalism we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it.
We had a lot of story ideas at the beginning of the media production phase of the course; stories on farming and livestock theft, water quality, ward development, and waste management. But all of these stories, by their very nature, relied on local government. We thus decided to so a story on the Hobbiton Outdoor Education Centre at Fairewood. There were a few reasons for this but the most important one is that we noticed that it was a real opportunity to do some good in the community and establish relationships between the youth of ward 4, Hobbiton and local NGO’s and community organisations. Thus, our objectives were to help the children in ward 4 by advertising Hobbiton to local organisations and business and to gain funding for workshops and activities. In this regard our journalism can best be defined as advocacy journalism because we aimed to “speak or plead on behalf of another, giving the other a face and a voice.” (Careless, S. 2000: 1). We decided that the best way to do this was not through a wall newspaper because there were no locations suitable for this. Instead we created a pamphlet that was distributed to local charities, NGO’s and businesses. Our objective for the pamphlet was to create a professional and visually attractive advertisement that could introduce potential donors to Hobbiton, the youth of ward 4 and potential activities they could be involved in. Although our objectives were clearly thought through and a product of the evolution of the project, we faced other problems as our desire to be a catalyst for change relied on business people and organisations, instead of the mobilisation of the community. However, as most of the work done for ward 4 has focused on youth, we decided it was a worthwhile risk.
As previously mentioned, our pamphlet is largely an advertisement for Hobbiton but it has specific goals; firstly, to attract attention to Hobbiton’s community involvement and secondly, to highlight issues of particular concern in ward 4. The pamphlet provided information on Hobbiton in the form of its vision, history and current programmes. But we also included information on the GOOD project and quotes by Josh Paton, the manager of Hobbiton at Fairewood. Our advocacy-based journalism was aimed at aiding development in ward 4. Hobbiton provides a perfect avenue for community development because that is its primary goal as an organisation. Whilst they do provide corporate packages, often these are done to help fund future community-based projects. We felt that our involvement in the relationship between Hobbiton, local communities and organisations could help foster lasting links between different sectors of people living in and around Grahamstown. In this regard, the journalism we produced was alternative for us because we were taking a fresh look at what our journalism could do for the people of ward 4. It was less a matter of providing news-worthy information and more about seeking out opportunities to create tangible change for a local community that relies so heavily on the influence of local government to create any meaningful change in their lives.
We feel that the media we produced was carefully tailored to the specific requirements of our vision for the production phase of this course. The pamphlet was meant to provide important information on what organisations could do to assist the youth of ward 4. Visual elements played an important role in this process; we needed the pamphlet to attract attention to the issues at hand but it needed to look professional and comprehensive because it was being distributed to business people and organisations that would be providing capital for our products and our pamphlet and presentation of it needed to inspire confidence in the aims of the program.
Our document research was quite thorough as we had compiled a number of different stories, even though we eventually decided on doing the story on Hobbiton at Fairewood. We relied on interviews, observations and focus groups to provide the bulk of our initial material. We also tried to make sure that we had a variety of sources that articulated the perceptions of the community across different groups of people. We felt that whatever journalism we would end up producing needed to be balanced, and as journalists we needed to be able to have a holistic understanding of the issues that were being raised during the research phases of the project.
One of the biggest disappointments of our ward is that we were unable to uncover any citizen journalists in the rural areas and although we tried to give a voice to their concerns, it was done through our conception of the problems they face. I think some of the other stories in our group were able to effectively showcase the issues; this is especially true of the TV pieces and the audio slideshows which were able to visually illustrate the stories and this had a far more direct and moving impact. For the research on farming stories and water quality we attempted to work with a variety of ‘official sources’ but it was a difficult operation trying to get the relevant material from them. Local NGO’s and advocacy groups were far more helpful but they are also far more independent than local government and do therefore not struggle with the same bureaucratic problems.
We found two farm schools in our area, one taught up to grade 7 while the other taught up to grade 4. After completing these grades the children are supposed to go into the township schools in Grahamstown for secondary education. This does not happen with all of them as many drop out and go work on the farms or just loiter. We wanted the people of ward 4 to understand that Hobbition is not just a place in their ward but a place that is there to serve them as well. Hobbiton teaches many skills and our idea was that with more funding, programmes that involve the children of those schools could be started so that should they not be able to continue to secondary level, they can find other positive ways of contributing to society.
Our production was not primarily targeted at the citizens but more at the business sector in order to highlight education in the area so that they can allocate funds that will boost all forms of education in that area. We chose to target the businesses because there is not much that the citizens can do for themselves with regards to education when they do not have funding, so the first step was to provide them with resources.. The solutions that we highlighted depend on us securing enough funding to assist Hobbiton because already, they do provide free services and if we could get them more money, they could extend their services to include more children.
The pamphlet we created included both information about the place and news on what they have done, projects that they are running that benefit the community and what our aim is in creating such a pamphlet. We believe that this structure made it more engaging because it had small bursts of information with pictures, interesting shapes and colours to attract the reader and show that this was about children’s education and recreation because another issue that was raised in the ward was that of children having nothing constructive to do which resulted in then engaging in under-age drinking and inappropriate sexual acts. We also included quotes that we pulled out and highlighted so that if there is nothing else that you read, you understand the aim of the production.
Since we were only able to begin distributing the pamphlets this week, it is a bit too soon to tell if they are effective but because we engage with the people as we distributed, one could say that we are getting positive feedback because many NGO’s seen interested in working with Hobbiton.
Our group was quite independent because firstly, we deviated from the original brief while still maintaining the main objectives. While we were researching other stories, we found that working with the municipality was near impossible because they we constantly redirecting us and not giving solid answers. We then thought it best to find other ways in which to help the community help itself. What we lost from not involving the government is probably not much because the ward councillor of that area doesn’t even go there as often as he should and any help that he sends them cannot be relied upon because things like the water truck come at very erratic times. What we gained however is a stronger bond in the community because everything that we are working with is already a part of that community so they are essentially building themselves up.
Initially, we divided our group in to two parts so there was 1 person from each specialization in each half. A radio person was then paired with a photographer while a writer worked with a designer. The photographer, although working primarily with the radio people, would also work with the WED groups. Each group then worked at its own pace and was largely independent but made sure to meet all the set deadlines. We discussed our story ideas so that groups didn’t clash and so that we could help each other if we knew something that would benefit the other groups. We have been fortunate enough to have a hard working group so we have not had problems with people not contributing equally but we have had colleagues who have went beyond their call of duty countless times.
The collaborative role for journalism in democratic societies is basically that in a democratic society, the role of a journalist is not to merely report from the sidelines but to act as a bridge between the public and the government. Our role is to aid the government in reaching all the citizens since everyone’s vote counts the same. It is also to give a voice to everyone so that certain communities are not marginalized and everyone basically has the same opportunities from the government. The relationship between the collaborative role and development journalism is the public and making sure that every person’s voice is heard. With development journalism, one works with marginalized and potentially marginalized people and gives them a voice. One also works with the government to ensure that they hear the voices of all the people and actually do something about it. Essentially, the crux of the relationship lies in accountability, the citizens, journalists and government holding each other accountable.
Pair Response
Responses on CMP production work
Roxanne Henderson and Zandile Mavuso
Without Water
Our CMP group is group number five which was allocated to ward four and ten. We then further divided ourselves into the two ward-based groups and we then fall under ward four. Ward four is the rural area on the outskirts of Grahamstown which comprises of the Manley Flats.
After being allocated to this ward, our mission was to find out more about the area and the issues that the people in the area might have. We went to the area and spoke to the people there and asked them about their way of life and their everyday struggles until we found something that would be common and thus affecting a great number of people.
The issue of water seemed to be a huge problem and because water is a necessity, we decided to take the issue and make it our focus. As journalists, we were looking for ways in which we could develop the community and probably come up with ways in which will help the community to get solutions for their problems. Thus the approach we used was development journalism whereby we were aiming at telling the story from the grass-root up, meaning; we were looking at ways in which the people could tell their own story and us being just catalysts that would work towards solutions.
After Xolisile had made us aware of the fact that his and about 25 other families were experiencing the same problem, we decided to go visit the people at their homes and ask them about the problem at hand. We found that they all shared similar sentiments. The reason behind this was so that we do not assume that people had the same problem in the area but instead we wanted a direct channel of communication which allowed people to tell us their problems and then could we be able to base our production on what they had singled out as problems themselves. Through this kind of approach, we were trying to establish a sense of democracy amongst the community so that we did not act superior to them in any way, but for them to feel that their views and thoughts matter and that they make a difference. They should not be marginalised but instead they should be able to make the difference that they want to have in their community as we were just acting as links between them and the higher powers that could actually do something about the situation.
Telling the story
We profiled one of the families living in the area that had no water and electricity. We spoke to them about the kind of help and support they could have tried in getting their needs met. We then asked them to act out household activities that needed the use of water and electricity which could not be done when there was no water available. We chose to use one family to tell the story on behalf of the community so that our story could be documented clearly and for it to be effective to the audience so that they could do something about the matter. Because we were using audio and photos to carry our message across, we were restricted by time as the piece had to be no more than 3 minutes long. In that duration, we had to make sure that we carry our point across and that we do not confuse the listener as radio is the kind of medium that has to be done right the first time you attempt doing it.
Our audio was recorded in isiXhosa as the family were comfortable in speaking their mother tongue. The interviewees are illiterate and speak very little English. They were able to express themselves well in their mother tongue; this meant that we could get more information and heartfelt responses from them. Because one of us could understand isiXhosa, communication was viable and we could have a constructive interview. There was no need to go back and record audio sound more than once. We had to go back a couple of times to ask if we could take more photos of them. We found that in photography it takes more time and an abundance of photographs to choose from to tell a story effectively. We also found returned to the family we interviewed in cases where audio material and photographs were not compatible in telling the story. This was the greatest technical challenge of the production.
Our target audience
Our audience for this story was the ward councillor, projects and organisations that deal with water and the farmers in the area. The reason we chose these people is because we were looking for solutions and ways in which the community could be helped or given ways to help themselves. Ultimately we would like to advocate self-sustainable solutions so that people are less bound by dependency on the municipality.
Challenges Faced
A problem we faced was working around our schedules in such a way that we find time to go back to the area and take more photos. Having only one of us speaking the language meant the one could not go without the other. We had to work around each other’s lecture times and negotiate time to go back while one takes the photos and the other mediates on behalf of the one who takes the photos. The weather also played a role in the difficulties of the production as it was raining heavily the week which we had to go take the photos. This held production up for some time as well as other concerns with natural light that was out of our control. The distance we had to travel is approximately 20 kilometres outside of Grahamstown and it also took careful planning to make as few trips there which were cost and time effective.
The audio being in isiXhosa, we had to translate over, which proved to be challenging as it had to be precise and still make sense to the audience. The story had to remain focussed on its objectives despite the information that may have been lost in translation. When we found people who were going to translate, we had to make sure that they could portray the character of the person whose speech they are translating. This all had to be achieved in a manner which would be least disruptive to the audience, maintaining a clear discussion of the important issue at hand.
Although the approaches we used deviated slightly from public journalism, including development and advocacy journalism, public journalism was helpful in maintaining a clear discussion between ordinary people, the media landscape and elite powers. The public journalism approach aided us in listening to the needs of people and reflecting on those needs instead of setting our own agendas. However, we found it was necessary to include other approaches to journalism as this allowed us to tell more than one side of a story.
Change of Identity
The ideas raised in the course surrounding public journalism have affected our identities as journalists by changing the methods we employ. The approach from the grassroots level up is a way of gathering information that differs from the methods used in mainstream media. As inspiring as this process can be it is also the source of much frustration. This approach is humbling because as a journalist you are directly confronted with the effects of your work and you realise who your work is really helping. Often the results are not what you expect. Doing this assignment has been overwhelming as it has clearly showed us what our limitations are as journalists in helping and changing communities while inspiring as it has helped us better understand our constraints and work effectively within them and to overcome them.
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