The essence of public journalism

Mainstream journalism only requires a journalist to get the story and have no intimate connection with their sources. With public journalism one needs to constantly be in contact with their sources in their environment. In the JDD-CMP course I found it really difficult seeing some of the difficult situations that people live in. One has a sense of emotional connection with their sources and journalism is no longer just about getting the story its also about getting involved in coming up with solutions for that particular environment or community.

Hass (2007) mentions how with public journalism is about facilitation a deliberating public and this is crucial. When we went out as a group to our different communities we ensured that the public have a voice in what their issues where and all we had to do was play a facilitative role. In becoming a public journalist practitioner I have realized that a lot of positive change can be enforced by public journalism. We took our productions to people in higher places and this brought about a collaborative role as well as a major change in the youth of ext 6 in Joza.

In our focus group the essence of public journalism was explored and many journalism students felt that they got more out of this course then just a mere story. They got to interact with the Grahamstown community in an intimate way and worked together with the community to formulate solutions which turned out to be sustainable and democratic. These solutions also aimed at developing the community in any way possible. In my opinion mainstream journalism is the journalism that sucks stories out of people then leaves then dry whereas public journalism allows for journalist to be more involved in changing the lives of people. If all journalist in the world would practice public journalism every once in a while then the world would be an amazing place to be.