Masithetheni: JDD CMP – Focus Group Reflection Part 1

1) What is Public journalism?

· People whose voices aren’t heard

· Representative of the public

· Forum/platform

· By the public for the public

· Linking problems to problem solving

· Facilitative

· Stories of the underrepresented in society

· Shape citizens agenda

· Connect to people on a personal level in individual HYPERLOCAL spaces

· No top-down approach – not journalists preconceived agendas

· Problem solving

· Processes of gate-keeping from the public sphere

· Gives people a different avenue to share a different stance – those who are permitted – more deliberation may lead to upliftment of societies considered sub-altern

· Less hierarchical because it is produced via submersion in communities which could lead to social action

· Direct line of communication from people

· Democracy from the ground up (people’s voices)

· Implement ideals of participatory democracy

· Empowers citizens to not only look to government

· Breakaway from the elitism of content

2) Usage for public news stories

· We were unsuccessful in terms of acquiring accountability from ward councillors – limited response all round

· Communication with NGO’s and other communitarian organisation was successful – we defined what the greater good was and achieved it

3) Was the deliberative space fostered on a large scale?

· No, but we could not force deliberation

4) The student journalist label

· Our work often chastised as “little project” – which lowers credibility

· Maybe because we were students we kept on hitting brick walls (with government). It could be a general trend/attitude of government officials to journalists

· Need to put extended pressure on people to get results

· People (mainly government officials) get defensive with journalists, which leads to slow responses

· We don’t carry enough authority

· We did well in terms of the goals of our readings to create discourse within our society and engage with issues

· We maintained a good relationship in the community that we worked with, which creates a better perception of journalists within that community.

· We have been accountable by collecting feedback within our wards

· Opened up lines to the community

· Opportunities to ask questions

· Deliberation on how they and we can better engage with the councillors

· We faced real life problems which will confront us as practising journalists

5) Transformation

· Interacting with community

· Less one dimensional than standard curriculum

· We emerged more capable people and realised our potential

· Potential difference has been made in the community

· Leaving projects now make some feel like the community were guinea pigs

· What we started will fade unless there are dedicated people within communities

· Try to make projects sustainable (helping crèches, old age homes)

· Way in which we approached project won trust and created links

· It was community strengthening

· Encouraged citizens to realise their own interconnectedness

· Work we produced was excellent BUT personally some people felt linguistic barriers made it very hard to connect – high reliance on Xhosa speakers

· Raises awareness of how important it is to be bilingual/trilingual, or at least have an understanding of isiXhosa

· Would make for sellable stories

· Public journalism can’t work on scale larger than community papers

· Mainstream projects maybe have one or two public journalism stories but that gatekeeps too in terms of who gets involved in project

· This should be a longer project for the Journalism department – the potential is huge

· The municipal manager emphasised that it was a project

· Length of project means that we are not taken seriously which does neither the community nor us justice

· But we have spent a longer time on stories than most journalists

· Average journalists would constantly be producing outputs

· So far, nothing has appeared in Grocott’s

JDD CMP – Focus Group Reflection Part 1 – Point summary