Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Spreading the word
We have distributed our ward DVD's to various people in ward 10. These are the four schools in the area that we have given them to - Mary Waters High School, St Mary's School, Grahamstown Primary School and George Dickerson. Because our focus was largely on youth and because we involved the schools in our research, we felt it was important and necessary to make sure that the schools had these resources.
We also left a DVD with the librarian and announced to the audience at our public meeting that they could view the productions there.
Other people we gave the DVD's to were the main catalysts in our area, namely:
* Newton Jordaan and one of his friends. These are two young adults in the area and Newton was the subject of one of the audio slideshows. They have promised to show the DVD to all their friends.
* Lena May and Iris Basson - ward councillors in the area, who have also been involved in our projects (tornado roofs and tennis courts respectively.)
* Marcelle Booysen, a prominent community member and catalyst.
*Patricia Bouwer, the lady whose house is going to be fixed by Active Voices with the support of businesses, students and lecturers.
The people we gave the DVD's to were excited to receive them and Lena May even said she is going to burn more of them to distribute to more people. She also wants to show the other ward councillors our work and try and convince them that student journalists are a good thing and that the municipality should use us and work with us not against us! :-)
We are confident that our productions will be viewed by many people and have a positive impact on the community.
(Posted by Gabi)
We also left a DVD with the librarian and announced to the audience at our public meeting that they could view the productions there.
Other people we gave the DVD's to were the main catalysts in our area, namely:
* Newton Jordaan and one of his friends. These are two young adults in the area and Newton was the subject of one of the audio slideshows. They have promised to show the DVD to all their friends.
* Lena May and Iris Basson - ward councillors in the area, who have also been involved in our projects (tornado roofs and tennis courts respectively.)
* Marcelle Booysen, a prominent community member and catalyst.
*Patricia Bouwer, the lady whose house is going to be fixed by Active Voices with the support of businesses, students and lecturers.
The people we gave the DVD's to were excited to receive them and Lena May even said she is going to burn more of them to distribute to more people. She also wants to show the other ward councillors our work and try and convince them that student journalists are a good thing and that the municipality should use us and work with us not against us! :-)
We are confident that our productions will be viewed by many people and have a positive impact on the community.
(Posted by Gabi)
Closing the circle
The meeting last night (Thursday, 21 October 2010) was an incredible event to witness. Our ward 10 group organised a showing of our media productions in the Recreation Hall in that area. In order to make the evening a little fun, dance groups were organised to perform at the beginning and end of the meeting. As a result, our audience was even larger than anticipated. The dance groups consisted of youth from the area, and their friends and parents came to support them and attend the meeting. It was quite a large and lively crowd that viewed our media productions as a result of this. About a third of the crowd were youths of the area (ranging from about 3 years old to 23 years old). The rest of the crowd were mostly concerned citizens and parents of the youths.
The reaction to our various media productions was a little unexpected, although it shouldn't have been. Most of the youth were so impressed with the fact that pictures and videos of people they knew were being screened, that they barely listened to what any of the pieces were actually about. Each familiar face was greeted with laughter and yells of approval. As a result, the audio was barely audible. The Active Voices group felt rather uplifted by the experience. It was general agreed that although not great attention was given to the message of the pieces, the uproar over them has created quite an incentive for people to find them later on. For this purpose we have left DVDs at various points in the area so that those interested can find them and we made sure this was known to those at the meeting. Hopefully word will spread from there and the media productions will get a wide audience base.
Our message was not completely lost in the tumult, however. Afterwards, the audience was invited to the microphone to speak. The strongest point that came from these dialogues was a need for the community to pull together and begin to resolve their own problems within the community - one of our own media production points. Much was said about individuals in the community needing to affect change in their community, to take action themselves. Overall, the meeting was encouraging and their were calls from a few people in attendance for there to be more meetings and more report backs to the community. If the course were to continue, there is great potential in the community to work with.
The reaction to our various media productions was a little unexpected, although it shouldn't have been. Most of the youth were so impressed with the fact that pictures and videos of people they knew were being screened, that they barely listened to what any of the pieces were actually about. Each familiar face was greeted with laughter and yells of approval. As a result, the audio was barely audible. The Active Voices group felt rather uplifted by the experience. It was general agreed that although not great attention was given to the message of the pieces, the uproar over them has created quite an incentive for people to find them later on. For this purpose we have left DVDs at various points in the area so that those interested can find them and we made sure this was known to those at the meeting. Hopefully word will spread from there and the media productions will get a wide audience base.
Our message was not completely lost in the tumult, however. Afterwards, the audience was invited to the microphone to speak. The strongest point that came from these dialogues was a need for the community to pull together and begin to resolve their own problems within the community - one of our own media production points. Much was said about individuals in the community needing to affect change in their community, to take action themselves. Overall, the meeting was encouraging and their were calls from a few people in attendance for there to be more meetings and more report backs to the community. If the course were to continue, there is great potential in the community to work with.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Patricia needs a roof
They have produced a soundslide on the houses still unfixed from the 2008 tornado in Grahamstown.
Patricia Bouwer is one of the women affected. She lives with three young children in the house her parents left her. Most of her roof is missing due to the tornado, and the black plastic provided by the municipality has blown off.
The water comes into her house, creating a damp environment. Her smallest child is only 2 months old now.
We are asking for your help. D&A Timbers has already donated one sheet of roofing material, and many concerned students have given money. Each sheet of Big Six costs approx. R280. Patricia needs at least 8 sheets to keep the water out. Currently we have enough money for four.
Please consider donating any amount of money, large or small, to help one of our community members in need. Contact Caeri Dunnell (083 637 9744 or caeri.dunnell@gmail.com)
Group Reflection on our term of public journalism in Ward 10, Grahamstown
Our conception of public journalism and the kinds of journalism we produced
Our conception of public journalism according to Haas centred around his ideas of the deliberating public. This was particularly evident in the initial public meeting that we held to get the community of Ward 10 to tell us their issues and concerns. The meeting was a space in which “different social groups could articulate and deliberate about their particular concerns among themselves” (Haas, 2007:40). We used their response for our story ideas, further contributing to the deliberation space.
Our conception of public journalism according to Haas centred around his ideas of the deliberating public. This was particularly evident in the initial public meeting that we held to get the community of Ward 10 to tell us their issues and concerns. The meeting was a space in which “different social groups could articulate and deliberate about their particular concerns among themselves” (Haas, 2007:40). We used their response for our story ideas, further contributing to the deliberation space.
Friday, October 8, 2010
From theory to practice: public journalism in action
Caeri Dunnell and Sizwe H
Through using Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism, we gained many things. Firstly, by listening to the people on the ground instead of getting story ideas from official sources, we found out what was really affecting the community of Ward 10 and 11. We found out that residents felt ignored by the municipality, marginalised because they live in the so-called ‘coloured’ area, and this is why they felt that the 6 houses affected by the 2008 tornado were still unfixed.
Our main source who actually notified us about Patricia’s situation was Ms Elena May who is the ward councillor of Ward 11. She claims to have worked extensively with the tornado affected families and she seemed to know them personally. She provided us with the addresses and the names of the occupants of the houses. When we got there, we were introduced to Ms Eumalda who is one of the neighbours and her house is amongst the six houses we had initially targeted for our story. Eumalda personally introduced us to the rest of the affected residents. We used Eumalda as our catalyst, she took us around to the houses affected and almost acted as a citizen or native journalist; introducing us to the neighbourhood, translating our questions to people who did not understand English and putting people at ease.
Public journalism is about “promoting public problem-solving” according to Haas, and therefore we tried to act as a link between the citizens and the municipality in order to get the problem solved. Haas proposes that “the public sphere (of journalism) and civil society (of civic organisations) be seen as standing in an explicitly dialectic and mutually supportive relationship” (41), but although this makes sense in theory, in practice it did not. We wanted to show our soundslide to the municipality to get their feedback and their side of the story, but it appears that the civil political society in South Africa does not wish to enter a ‘mutually supportive relationship’ with journalism. We were interested in exploring the possibility for a collaborative role between us as Active Voices and the Makana municipality; according to Christians definition where the media and the state have a symbiotic relationship – the media obtains official comment on newsworthy issues and the authorities’ views get disseminated to the public with no extra effort. If the municipality had been willing to co-operate it could have been beneficial to all involved; the unfixed houses would be brought to the municipality’s attention, they would fix Patricia’s roof and this service delivery would be broadcast to the community as an example of how the municipality does care and does act. In the theory we examined, the problem with the collaborative role was always from the journalistic point of view- to avoid propaganda and abuse by the government. But in our experience, the problem lies more with the authorities who are ‘mistrustful’ and ‘suspicious’ of journalists and their role.
When the municipality refused to watch our soundslide and kicked us out their meeting, although we were on their official agenda, we turned to other areas of civil society in order to set the problem solving in motion. We were overwhelmed by the response; the very first appeal we made (to D&A Timbers) was answered, the manager merely asked; “how much do you need?”, and “what is the address we can deliver it to?”, without even watching the soundslide. The roof is set to be fixed on Saturday 9 October, which is an achievement of our objectives.
Our objectives at the start of the CMP course was to highlight the breach of human rights in the case of the tornado victims, find answers to why the roofs had not been fixed and potentially come to a solution where either the municipality agreed to act on their promises, or local businesses filled the gap and provided assistance. To be honest, we did not expect the municipality to listen, and we also did not expect businesses to be so generous, but our goals were clearly thought through and arose out of our great desire to see something done about the situation. Although somewhat optimistic to expect change, we both felt that if we ended the project and Patricia still lived in a house with a huge hole with water pouring in during the wet season, we would give up hope in journalism and possibly shed some tears.
We decided to tell the story from a personal, human interest angle, focusing specifically on Patricia Bouwer and her family, whose roof was the worst affected. Apparently people are more likely to identify with and respond to one face of suffering, as they are generally overwhelmed by masses of suffering people. Our story was alternative to mainstream journalism because of this, as the story had appeared in Grocott’s previously, with a more factual, non-biased slant. Officials such as Lena May were approached, and municipality spokesperson Thandi Matibise also commented. Patricia was given one line in the article, and the reader was left with no definite impression of the extent of the damage, or an emotional connection to the people involved. It sounded like another complain/sob story. When we visited the people affected and heard their stories, saw their roofs, we were moved to action; and in the same way we wanted our viewers to feel this compassion and compulsion to help. Therefore we used a very subjective mode of storytelling, allowing Patricia to tell her own story in her own language, and deliberately advocated her cause, leaning more towards advocacy journalism. Our soundslide ended on an appeal for help, and did not use any official sources, which is not very mainstream journalistic.
Our target audience for the first soundslide was very clearly people in a position to help – the municipality and businesses. The way we covered the story we were expecting some kind of deliberation from the public. It was intended to spark public debate about the lack of self initiative from the from the victims of unfortunate circumstances for example in Patricia’s case, the mini tornado that struck Grahamstown in 2008. Our initial intention with the story was to get a comment from the municipality about why Patricia’s roof has not been fixed yet. We expected anything from a timeline (of a possible waiting list) to any legitimate reason. Because of the nature of our story, we did not necessarily need to have other voices. We were not intending on challenging anyone, or expose the slowness of service delivery, but all we needed was try to help Patricia get a roof for her house hence our story did not include diverse views.
We however attempted to include the input from the municipality. That focus group did not work out as planned. We moved on to speak to the people at FAMSA (Family and Marriage Association of South Africa) to see if we could get any advice about Patricia’s situation. They promised to help Patricia in whatever way they could as long as that assistance was only psychologically based.
Our second soundslide will show the roof being fixed, and act as advertising for D&A Timbers as well as a ‘How to’ piece for the community, enabling them to fix their own roofs if they have the material. This will enable development.
Through this process we went through many emotions; feeling shocked and upset at the conditions Patricia was living in with her one month old baby, sympathising with the other residents affected, feeling frustrated and helpless when the municipality refused to listen and hopeful when the businesses acted out of generosity. With regards to the actual process of the story, we felt constrained by deadlines as well as the soundslide format (although it was very effective) and constrained in terms of transport to the township. I feel more part of my community now, after taking taxis to her house, speaking to people and hearing their concerns and enabling solutions to be made. We could have put in more time into this story, approached more people, but our feelings of helplessness prevented us – after getting helped we felt more energised to tackle the problem. This highlighted for me the reason why so many people are apathetic and do not try to help themselves; it is because they have given up hope for change. If two middle-class educated students could lose hope during a short course, how much more could people who have lived with a leaking roof for two years give up hope?
We do feel that there needs to be more support from lecturers during this course, often we felt way out of our depth and in need of some psychological counselling after confronting the issues we did – other people in our group had to create pamphlets for prevention of sodomy, and the problems seemed to big to tackle in our own strength. We also felt frustrated because the potential of Haas’s public journalism are so great, yet in practice we felt we were selling ourselves short, not contributing enough time or effort or dedication to the cause due to demands from our other major, budget constraints and pure exhaustion from the end of term. But this course has opened our eyes to how journalism can be a real force for change within society, and restored our naïve first-year hopes to ‘change the world’ which had been systematically crushed by three years of media studies.
In this way, the course has impacted on our identities as journalists. We no longer see ourselves as aloof or apart from society, or unable to get involved due to objectivity concerns and non-bias; instead we are free to take initiative, expose inequalities and act on them. Merely covering the story as we would have before reading Haas’s public philosophy and discussing development, alternative and radical roles, would have resulted in a moving piece without any change. This is exploitative in nature, as Patricia would have opened her heart, her home and raised her hopes only to have nothing more come of it than our good marks and perhaps an emotional response from readers of Grocottt’s where it will appear as a photo essay. But now she will be uplifted, and through her, other residents will learn how to fix their own roofs, and stop waiting for the municipality to come to their aid because it might be a really long wait.
The only question left is how this kind of journalism can be sustainable as a potential career, but Grocott’s and the Daily Dispatch are leading the way in this kind of thinking.
Through using Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism, we gained many things. Firstly, by listening to the people on the ground instead of getting story ideas from official sources, we found out what was really affecting the community of Ward 10 and 11. We found out that residents felt ignored by the municipality, marginalised because they live in the so-called ‘coloured’ area, and this is why they felt that the 6 houses affected by the 2008 tornado were still unfixed.
Our main source who actually notified us about Patricia’s situation was Ms Elena May who is the ward councillor of Ward 11. She claims to have worked extensively with the tornado affected families and she seemed to know them personally. She provided us with the addresses and the names of the occupants of the houses. When we got there, we were introduced to Ms Eumalda who is one of the neighbours and her house is amongst the six houses we had initially targeted for our story. Eumalda personally introduced us to the rest of the affected residents. We used Eumalda as our catalyst, she took us around to the houses affected and almost acted as a citizen or native journalist; introducing us to the neighbourhood, translating our questions to people who did not understand English and putting people at ease.
Public journalism is about “promoting public problem-solving” according to Haas, and therefore we tried to act as a link between the citizens and the municipality in order to get the problem solved. Haas proposes that “the public sphere (of journalism) and civil society (of civic organisations) be seen as standing in an explicitly dialectic and mutually supportive relationship” (41), but although this makes sense in theory, in practice it did not. We wanted to show our soundslide to the municipality to get their feedback and their side of the story, but it appears that the civil political society in South Africa does not wish to enter a ‘mutually supportive relationship’ with journalism. We were interested in exploring the possibility for a collaborative role between us as Active Voices and the Makana municipality; according to Christians definition where the media and the state have a symbiotic relationship – the media obtains official comment on newsworthy issues and the authorities’ views get disseminated to the public with no extra effort. If the municipality had been willing to co-operate it could have been beneficial to all involved; the unfixed houses would be brought to the municipality’s attention, they would fix Patricia’s roof and this service delivery would be broadcast to the community as an example of how the municipality does care and does act. In the theory we examined, the problem with the collaborative role was always from the journalistic point of view- to avoid propaganda and abuse by the government. But in our experience, the problem lies more with the authorities who are ‘mistrustful’ and ‘suspicious’ of journalists and their role.
When the municipality refused to watch our soundslide and kicked us out their meeting, although we were on their official agenda, we turned to other areas of civil society in order to set the problem solving in motion. We were overwhelmed by the response; the very first appeal we made (to D&A Timbers) was answered, the manager merely asked; “how much do you need?”, and “what is the address we can deliver it to?”, without even watching the soundslide. The roof is set to be fixed on Saturday 9 October, which is an achievement of our objectives.
Our objectives at the start of the CMP course was to highlight the breach of human rights in the case of the tornado victims, find answers to why the roofs had not been fixed and potentially come to a solution where either the municipality agreed to act on their promises, or local businesses filled the gap and provided assistance. To be honest, we did not expect the municipality to listen, and we also did not expect businesses to be so generous, but our goals were clearly thought through and arose out of our great desire to see something done about the situation. Although somewhat optimistic to expect change, we both felt that if we ended the project and Patricia still lived in a house with a huge hole with water pouring in during the wet season, we would give up hope in journalism and possibly shed some tears.
We decided to tell the story from a personal, human interest angle, focusing specifically on Patricia Bouwer and her family, whose roof was the worst affected. Apparently people are more likely to identify with and respond to one face of suffering, as they are generally overwhelmed by masses of suffering people. Our story was alternative to mainstream journalism because of this, as the story had appeared in Grocott’s previously, with a more factual, non-biased slant. Officials such as Lena May were approached, and municipality spokesperson Thandi Matibise also commented. Patricia was given one line in the article, and the reader was left with no definite impression of the extent of the damage, or an emotional connection to the people involved. It sounded like another complain/sob story. When we visited the people affected and heard their stories, saw their roofs, we were moved to action; and in the same way we wanted our viewers to feel this compassion and compulsion to help. Therefore we used a very subjective mode of storytelling, allowing Patricia to tell her own story in her own language, and deliberately advocated her cause, leaning more towards advocacy journalism. Our soundslide ended on an appeal for help, and did not use any official sources, which is not very mainstream journalistic.
Our target audience for the first soundslide was very clearly people in a position to help – the municipality and businesses. The way we covered the story we were expecting some kind of deliberation from the public. It was intended to spark public debate about the lack of self initiative from the from the victims of unfortunate circumstances for example in Patricia’s case, the mini tornado that struck Grahamstown in 2008. Our initial intention with the story was to get a comment from the municipality about why Patricia’s roof has not been fixed yet. We expected anything from a timeline (of a possible waiting list) to any legitimate reason. Because of the nature of our story, we did not necessarily need to have other voices. We were not intending on challenging anyone, or expose the slowness of service delivery, but all we needed was try to help Patricia get a roof for her house hence our story did not include diverse views.
We however attempted to include the input from the municipality. That focus group did not work out as planned. We moved on to speak to the people at FAMSA (Family and Marriage Association of South Africa) to see if we could get any advice about Patricia’s situation. They promised to help Patricia in whatever way they could as long as that assistance was only psychologically based.
Our second soundslide will show the roof being fixed, and act as advertising for D&A Timbers as well as a ‘How to’ piece for the community, enabling them to fix their own roofs if they have the material. This will enable development.
Through this process we went through many emotions; feeling shocked and upset at the conditions Patricia was living in with her one month old baby, sympathising with the other residents affected, feeling frustrated and helpless when the municipality refused to listen and hopeful when the businesses acted out of generosity. With regards to the actual process of the story, we felt constrained by deadlines as well as the soundslide format (although it was very effective) and constrained in terms of transport to the township. I feel more part of my community now, after taking taxis to her house, speaking to people and hearing their concerns and enabling solutions to be made. We could have put in more time into this story, approached more people, but our feelings of helplessness prevented us – after getting helped we felt more energised to tackle the problem. This highlighted for me the reason why so many people are apathetic and do not try to help themselves; it is because they have given up hope for change. If two middle-class educated students could lose hope during a short course, how much more could people who have lived with a leaking roof for two years give up hope?
We do feel that there needs to be more support from lecturers during this course, often we felt way out of our depth and in need of some psychological counselling after confronting the issues we did – other people in our group had to create pamphlets for prevention of sodomy, and the problems seemed to big to tackle in our own strength. We also felt frustrated because the potential of Haas’s public journalism are so great, yet in practice we felt we were selling ourselves short, not contributing enough time or effort or dedication to the cause due to demands from our other major, budget constraints and pure exhaustion from the end of term. But this course has opened our eyes to how journalism can be a real force for change within society, and restored our naïve first-year hopes to ‘change the world’ which had been systematically crushed by three years of media studies.
In this way, the course has impacted on our identities as journalists. We no longer see ourselves as aloof or apart from society, or unable to get involved due to objectivity concerns and non-bias; instead we are free to take initiative, expose inequalities and act on them. Merely covering the story as we would have before reading Haas’s public philosophy and discussing development, alternative and radical roles, would have resulted in a moving piece without any change. This is exploitative in nature, as Patricia would have opened her heart, her home and raised her hopes only to have nothing more come of it than our good marks and perhaps an emotional response from readers of Grocottt’s where it will appear as a photo essay. But now she will be uplifted, and through her, other residents will learn how to fix their own roofs, and stop waiting for the municipality to come to their aid because it might be a really long wait.
The only question left is how this kind of journalism can be sustainable as a potential career, but Grocott’s and the Daily Dispatch are leading the way in this kind of thinking.
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.
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.
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