Reflecting on Mary Waters

Group 5 Ward 10 – Active Voices
Lerusha Reddy, Gabi Falanga, Lynn Nowers and Lauren Roodt

Compulsory question 1:
Haas argues that there are two different views on the needs of the public- the communitarian and liberal perspectives. We found that because of these difference it was difficult to establish what the “most important” issues in the community were because not everyone has the same common goal. We heeded Fraser’s argument and did not assume that the whole of ward 10 were on equal footing. Ward 10 covers a very large area which includes very different socio-economic groups. We therefore decided to focus solely on one of these groups – the “coloured community”. The people in this area were more vocal about their issues and are less represented by Grahamstown’s mainstream media. Haas suggests that where the community is not able to solve problems independently, journalists should put them in touch with relevant experts. We did this by eliciting the help of Parks and Recreation to fix the facilities alongside the community - we discuss this in more detail later. To encourage further deliberation between community members and to provide a platform for deliberation we are planning to host another public meeting. We aim to use our media outputs as a starting point to initiate discussion amongst the community with the hope that they will continue these projects by themselves as suggest by Haas. These journalistic procedures were beneficial in creating bonds between us and the community which opened doors for further deliberation and engagement. This type of journalism also ensures that locals participate in the solution rather than being treated as outsiders to the problem. Solutions are more likely to be successful with the community’s input and involvement.

Compulsory question 2:
The ideas raised by this course have contributed to our understanding of critical media production and consumption. It has made us question the role of the main stream media and seek alternatives. This is especially significant in a country such as South African where there are drastic discrepancies with regard to power relations in society. This approach has helped us to see that a journalist can and should be a part of the community which they are working with rather than seeing themselves as a separate entity that “parachutes” into their community. Instead it has taught us to cultivate and sustain relationships with the community. In addition to this, we tried to reverse the antagonistic relationship between the community and the government. Rather than attacking the government it is our role as journalists to encourage government co-operation with the community.

In a country such as South Africa where illiteracy rates are significantly low, it is the journalist’s role to create ways for those whose voices are less powerful to be heard. This can be achieved by actively engaging with the community and allowing citizens to speak so that their voices come through in the stories and not just the journalist’s voice.

We set to achieve ideals of democracy and development by following Haas’s notion of a public sphere in which all members of different social strata engage and interact in the setting of a news agenda. Our main objectives were initiate community integration and to encourage the community to take the initiative to confront issues which affect them. By following the objective of promoting community involvement we strove to give voice to the less powerful members of society by exposing their concerns which would ordinarily be ignored by the mainstream media. Our most important goal was to produce concrete, tangible results as a result of our stories produced. We placed special emphasis on allowing the citizens to set the agenda which meant that stories and the changes resulting from our research were sustainable and relevant to the community. Our results were measurable because our aims were to produce tangible projects for the community to follow.

By combining the articles written by the writers in our group we managed to produce an informative and interesting wall newspaper which addressed the needs of the community. Our wall newspaper was designed with the intention to attract a younger audience as many of the issues that were raised in the community were issues which were a result of the actions of the youth such as vandalism and drug abuse. However, problems raised are mostly concerns which need to be addressed by adults and therefore the wall newspaper also needed to be accessible to this age group. In addition to the wall newspaper we produced long, narrow fliers (210 mm x 98mm) to advertise where our wall papers had been placed and to encourage people attend our focus group. Posters and fliers were also created to advertise our public meeting in the recreation hall.
Because our work targeted community members we used a very colloquial tone and incorporated both English and Afrikaans into our productions to encourage a wider readership. We tried to give our work a fresh, vibrant feel by using bold, eye-catching colours as well as using local slang in the stories such as “tjommas” and “lekker” to appeal to the youth. We also made use of a time-line and vox-pops to add an interactive element to the wall paper in addition to offering alternative activities to do in the area. We also advertised alternative forms of expression for the youth such as becoming a Grocott’s citizen journalist or joining Upstart and Radio Grahamstown. This links to the notion of public journalism which allows everyday citizens to produce journalism at a grassroots level.

We made attempts to contact the ward 10 citizen journalist so that he could collaborate with us on stories, however he was too busy. We did, however, engage with community members and community catalysts to elicit story ideas and to gather information on relevant details. We decided to approach municipal departments to help us with repairing the facilities and to provide information for the stories because it is their responsibility and in the spirit of democracy they are entitled to give their take on a situation. We were very lucky to have the co-operation of the Parks and Recreation department. We were very weary of power structures and have ensured that the community was involved throughout the whole process of story development.
Our approach was not a conventional mainstream media approach but instead we acted as a bridge between the community and municipal managers. We have initiated the process of repairing the tennis courts and sourcing musical instruments for the Dakawa Centre. This is an alternative form of journalism because mainstream media usually just reports on the facts rather than getting involved. Throughout these processes we promoted public deliberation and participation following Haas’ guidelines. The journalism which we are producing is aiding development in the community.

We used multiple to research our stories. We began by doing ground research by walking around in the community, making contacts and getting a feel for the area and their lifestyle. Thereafter we invited to local community to a public meeting where they raised multiple issues from which we took our main story ideas. Thereafter we did one-on-one interviews with community leaders and municipal managers. We also held small discussion groups with youth in the community to get further understanding of their experiences and thoughts. Here citizens were encouraged to engage in problem solving.

A few days after displaying the wall papers (x8) we walked through the community getting feedback from the locals. Most of the locals who have seen and read the wall papers were excited that the facilities in the area were going to be fixed. The librarian also noted that many youth and adults that had been into the library had offered positive comments about the wall paper. A striking quote from the caretaker of the recreation hall was: “There are a lot of excited people who are taking concern now”. This shows that our objectives to encourage active involvement are being met. Some of the headmasters and one of the community leaders were cynical because they feel that these promises have been made numerous times and never been kept. We met some people who had not seen the wall papers and they suggested that we put more down the main street, Albany Street, as this is where most traffic passes.
We found it useful to collaborate with the other multimedia students in our group as they had covered similar concerns and stories to us and therefore had different sources and responses to draw on.