Public journalism and the cmp course...

Nicole Naicker

When we started the whole JDD-CMP course I thought that it was going to be a tedious semester. Yet again were we expected to just go out and do as told to get a mark, only this time we were going into the greater community of Grahamstown.

At first we were all concerned that we would just go in and exploit the people for stories and leave with a mark. However, when we actually went to the community and interacted with people we realised that it was much more. People were eager to talk to us. We sort of stood out, our little group our Rhodes students. And by the mere fact of being Rhodes journalism students, and walking in to the community you get the sense that you’re giving people some sort of expectation. At our public meeting the community voiced many problems, and because we had organised the meeting and facilitated it, it felt like it was our responsibility to do something about these problems. But the problems were beyond our means of solving, and it felt like we created an expectation of nothing.

However, we decided to help where we could, and organised the litter clean-up. It wasn’t a part of the course, and we weren’t going to get any marks for it, and that sort of makes me feel better about it – we weren’t doing this for ourselves, but were trying to help. For the first time in three years I felt that we could actually do something, and maybe make a difference.

In my three years at Rhodes I always felt detached from the work I was doing. I never truly cared about what I wrote because it was just random pieces of work which would only be seen by a lecturer for marks. For this course, however, we were asked to produce work that would be displayed in and around the communities. The people the stories were about would see them. So, for the first time I found myself completely worried about my stories. I didn’t want to get any facts wrong, or offend or insult anyone by anything I had written. And this made me realise that my writing might actually have an effect on others.

After this course I think that public journalism is a preferable form of journalism. You get a chance to actually do something positive for people and hopefully make a difference and affect a change. And, you might get a better story because of that. Because you will know the people and their lives better.