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.
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