Netball Initiative

By: Nonceba Mhlauli and Ntombi Mlangeni
Introduction:
This is a critical evaluation report of a focus we conducted for the Netball initiative in extension six and seven, ward two: Grahamstown. This Netball initiative was started in July of this year by two Nombulelo High school learners in Joza. We created a video production of this netball story and then conducted a focus group with interested stakeholders.
• Looking back on our media productions, the one thing which was gained in our media productions and outputs in relation to Haas’s notion of public journalism was public deliberation, in relation to what the public deliberates upon and who decides what should be deliberated on. This was done through firstly conducting a public meeting as a whole group in extension six, and including the residence of extension seven as well. At this public meeting, the community came together to discuss and deliberate on issues affecting them as a community and therefore mapping out a way forward. Through this process, the public was totally in charge of such deliberation and the only role we had was to facilitate. We then also conducted a focus group with members of the same community in relation to a netball initiative which was stated by young women in the township for young kids. We must say that this focus group was extremely successful as the outcomes of this focus group brought us to a place of trying to establish a formal league for this netball initiative.

Further more, relating to this noting of public journalism, Haas, (2007:37) also notes the importance of the goals of public deliberation, in that the ultimate goal would be to stimulate citizens to explore the basis for differences in perspectives by recovering latent conflicts of interest among different social groups, (2007:37). We admit that in this regard, this was lost in our media productions process due to lack of time of being to stimulate the residence of our ward, however in relation to our focus group itself, we believe that that we have done this successfully regarding the stimulation of our participants in trying to form a league and planning an upcoming netball tournament.

• We’ve also found that ideas which were raised in both the Journalism, Development and Democracy and Critical Media Production courses have impacted on our identities as professionalising journalists/media producers in that it has changed our views of journalism. As journalists one would imagine that all that matters is getting the story out there but this course has proved that journalists can play an active role in changing the lives of ordinary people in society. The Critical media production course has also proved that as media producers our productions can make a change. Both these courses have impacted on your identity in that we are now more into public journalism as opposed to mainstream journalism which is mostly favoured in media companies. We also believe that it is important for media producers to engage with their audience on a one-on-one level and take into consideration what the peoples concerns are in general.

• What we set out to achieve was to find out what exactly the story behind this initiative was and why the department of Sports and Recreation was not helping this initiative. We also set out to help this initiative through trying to set up a formal league and sponsorship, we’re once again very happy to report that our focus group dealt this issue and as previously mentioned, we’re going to have a tournament this Saturday, (09/10/2010) and then have a meeting with all relevant stake holders to set up our tournament. We’re also been able to secure sponsorship from the Sports Admin at Rhodes to sponsor these netball teams with kit.

• We also produced a type of journalism which is more development journalism as it focuses on developing the youth in the township through sports.

• In going about our public journalism work, we went about it through using a coherent journalistic approach of trying to firstly get what the real story was then move onto how we can further develop it.

• Our journalism has enhanced the processes of democracy and development as it focuses on developing sporting codes in the Grahamstown townships to give the youth the opportunity to play for the national team some day. We focused on a netball initiative that was formed in ext 6 but is still in need of a proper league and kit. We spoke to people who have information on how to get funding and now we are in the process of forming a proper structure with Makana netball to expand other teams as well as form a formal league. Our journalism is innovative and alternative as mainstream journalism would just report on the netball initiative we are actually actively involved in trying to uplift the project.


• As previously mentioned, we believe we’re achieved the objectives we set and that we also feel that it even though the process we went through was not an easy process but after our focus group things became clearer. Our specific target audience was the people who started this initiative, the people from the Department of Sports and Recreation and the Rhodes Sports Administration and we also made it a point that the work we showed carefully illustrated the fact that this initiative is very important and that it is also of paramount importance that it be formalized and made sustainable. We used clips from some of the players talking about how they would really like a league to be formed and for them to get sponsorship so that this initiative becomes sustainable. We decided to employ a news angle to work to show the importance of sustaining the initiative. According to our reflections, the message seemed to have been received well because at the end of the focus group The Rhodes sports admin advised us to inform the netball coaches to form a committee which can then be liable for the funds that they will be able to get from the sports department.

• We believe the story has a clear focus and the angle was on youth development through sport. The narrative is strong as townships do not have enough sports and recreational centers the sports center should be expanded in terms of equipment and kit as well as leagues to encourage the youth to keep playing sport. The story has a fresh spin as people mainly focus on the negative aspects of the township this story focuses on the positive things that the youth have done.