Monday, June 11, 2007
Critical Reflection
Journalism is a very tricky subject to learn via PowerPoint. Good, solid practical experience cannot be substituted by a slide telling the dos and don’ts. Journalism can be taught in a classroom but not entirely, the important point is that we have come to Rhodes to be taught to be the best possible journalists. Media studies help with this respect but there was too much emphasis on media studies and not enough focus on our specialisation this term. I know from one of my friends in Photography that they had to return early in the year to begin an intensive number of lessons in photography. While obviously we have been writing since first year and are proficient in it, we need a comparable level of learning for writing. The lectures needed to contain more exercises with strict deadlines – for marks – that teach us the value of being prepared, resourceful and to finish on time. I still feel confused about how to be a journalist at times, how to be a good writer. Repetition is important when it is used to teach a lesson, when the class has accomplished a task and has learnt how to apply the acquired knowledge, then the repetition should cease and then we move onto a new set of skills to learn. Testing is useful in reminding us of what we have learnt, and can reveal to the lecturers how effective they have been and how much the class has learnt. We should have written more tests, not just general knowledge ones but ones like the class exercises.
Having said that without lectures we would be lost, the slides offer invaluable tips and lessons and I make use of them often when writing. The slideshow about the man in the balloon was interesting for a minute but it dragged on, getting more and more boring. It was bad in comparison to the slides we were viewed in class and were emailed about the story writing process. I thought these were really useful and I was grateful to read them and adapt them to my writing process. We needed to see more slides which would help with the practical side of writing, around constructing leads, paragraphs, kickers. As I said it is our third year but these things have never been taught to us satisfactorily.
As a group we all pulled our weight. It was peculiar that Sam left us early on in the term. Whether the reason was that she did not like us personally, or if her friends were in another group is unclear. What is clear is that she missed out on a rewarding beat with a rich pool of sources and stories. Group work has positives and negatives. I feel that it in a group individual creativity and expression is constrained at the behest of the larger group. However in this group we all learned skills and lessons that will benefit our writing ability in the long run. We made ample use of the group blog and I thoroughly enjoyed the group practical sessions with Adrienne and Sim. We could function effectively although we are quite busy with our other majors and some had tutoring. Group work has made me more team orientated, I understand how group dynamics function and will be able to apply the lessons learnt from this term’s group work to group work situations outside of university. I think it is certain that some people are better suited to group work then others. Some people need to work with people with a similar work ethic though, and those with a better work ethic and strong leadership skills make group work better for all involved as they can encourage others to work harder and set standards for others to emulate or use as a yardstick for their own work.
There was a feeling of independence from the group when out working, most of my stories I found out about by myself, I made the contacts by myself and followed up ideas by myself. We did communicate over issues about which we were unclear, such as the civic map, portfolios and stories, but there has been a lot of confusion this term.
The Beat system was useful. Once we have identified all the possible sources of news and locations of news and put them onto the civic map, it makes it a lot easier to find and write stories. One obviously has to dig deep, be patient and careful. One thing I have learnt is to not be lethargic when chasing a story, if nothing is happening; do not wait on that source. Move onto something else because waiting around for an interview is very stressful and time consuming. Rhodes and Grahamstown are over reported. It is a cosmopolitan university but not a cosmopolitan town. Subsequently there is little of interest to report, for a lot of people to try to report on, a lot of the time. What is a major difficulty is coordination of timetables. It can be difficult to arrange times to conduct interviews, the course seemed to expect that we could fully devote ourselves to being a beat journalist around the university, but this was not simple. My other major required a lot of time this term and also involved group work, I could not always arrange an interview at a convenient time as I had another arrangement. This did not stop me from securing information but it was difficult, I’m glad I overcame it.
Unfortunately I was absent for the first week of term so I was unaware how the course started or what introductory comments that the class were given. Luckily I was not overwhelmed at all this term. I was a bit under prepared for the group work and it took a while for it all to come clear. The group work was a challenge; I knew most of the group but was not friends with them, so it took a couple of meetings to get comfortable.
The previous two years have not been excellent courses, I have looked at how the first years are being taught and I am filled with a bit of envy as they are being taught in a much better way then we ever have. This shows in the assumptions of prior learning, we are not the finished article yet, I feel I want to learn a lot more, but it is already my third year.
Another point to which I was referring when I said we needed more work was that we should be doing more intensive learning in class. I liked doing the class exercises. All of them were useful and the explanations offered afterwards were helpful although we tend to stick to long to talking about the same point or something that has no relevance to writing. My point is that we should do as many exercises as possible in the lecture periods in order to get better acquainted with the need to quickly write on deadline.
The subediting drills were useful. I have not been a subeditor and all work that I hand in ends up changed, although I feel some subeditors are over zealous with correcting articles and end up rewriting the story.
How we implemented the civic mapping
We then ventured out and tried to find our own stories through spaces such as the internet (e.g. Studentzone, departmental websites, etc.); posters; the Activate offices and random tip-offs from students around campus. The E-research depository, the statistical digest and the Rhodes website have been some of the best places to find story ideas from.
We talked to the Deans of almost every faculty. Some of the Deans were very helpful and shared some important information. We also talked to the Finance Registrar, the Registrar, Director of communications, the SRC, Director of Human Resources, the Vice-Chancellor, students and lecturers. We talked to most of the people in the academic administration offices, such as the Head of International Office Marius Vermaak and Chrissie Boughey from the Academic Development Centre. We also spoke to Sandy Stephenson from the Academic Planning and Quality Assurance office. Most of these people were very good sources, if they couldn’t give out the relevant information they would redirect you to the right person to talk to.
We talked to the different Institutes, such as the Institute for Social and Economic Research; the Environmental Education and Sustainability Unit; the Telkom Centre of Excellence; the Public Service Accountability Monitor and the Data Management Unit. We talked to some of the broader Grahamstown community on issues of research that affect them.
However, not everyone was as helpful and cooperative as we had hoped for. Some of the secretaries were not helpful at all and some were just hard to deal with. Some of the Deans at first were a little hesitant about giving out information especially for matters relating to university policies.
There were for some of us in the group regular sources such as the Activate news planner which helped generate some of the stories. Studentzone and listservs were also regular sources as some of the stories were sourced from there.
What worked for the group is that we used the physical spaces, such as hanging around in the Activate offices, Pick ‘n’ Pay and Checkers parking lots and the departmental and Faculty offices, to our advantage. The notice boards around campus, at the Union; dining halls and library, were also the best spots for story generation.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Critical Evaluation of the Course...done ages ago, but not posted...sorry...!
I’ve definitely learned a lot from the journalism work that I’ve done this term. And this is entirely due to the practical work that I have done producing stories as part of the small, informal news agency which I was required to form with Ian, Tim and Nompumezo. I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that journalism is something you can only really learn by doing.
There are several quite separate stages to publishing a news story. First there is coming up with the story idea. Then there is researching the story. Then there is writing the story. Then there is marketing the story. Through most of these, there is the business of working in a group. In this reflection I will examine each of these areas individually.
Finding Story Ideas
I am so incredibly grateful for how pushy I was at the beginning of the term when we were deciding on group beats. Not only did our group secure the academic beat, but we managed to extend the beat to include all areas of academic life at Rhodes. This meant that we had enough story possibilities to satisfy a team three or four times our size. One thing which became very clear was that there are a lot of things going on in Rhodes University that never get reported. There is enough going on in Grahamstown as a whole for the local student newspapers to publish only two or three academic stories every edition. And Grocotts Mail or the bigger regional papers only pick up the really big ones. What this means is that, contrary to what one might think, many potential sources have never really had much to do with student reporters, and are very, very willing to engage with us.
The most obvious stories can all be gleaned from the mailing lists, and most local newsrooms clearly rely on these. Because we were such a small group, it was easy for us to do the same. It is clear that very little in depth searching for stories or investigative journalism takes place. This is the sort of thing that you need if you want to uncover scandals and really exciting pieces. I did just a tiny bit of this sort of investigation, and the results were fantastic. One example was going to the Sasco general meeting, just in case something interesting happened. This was how I got the Youth day exams story.
I also asked every source that I interviewed if they knew of any interesting stories which they thought might be worth reporting. I got a whole lot of good things from this, although almost all of it is stuff which is going to happen next term. Most of them involve particular meetings where ground-breaking decisions are going to be made about various aspects of the university and its future. None of these meetings are formally advertised to students or student newspapers, and the only way you can find out about their significance is if someone involved tells you about it. It is very unfortunate that many of these highly important decisions never get properly reported to the university community - it seems administration rely mostly on closed circuit mailing lists and ‘the grapevine’ more than anything else. And this is not their problem – it should be the job of journalists to find out what’s going on, not just wait to be told. Of course, this does involve a lot of work.
I had originally anticipated exploiting my friendship with Kathryn Furman, the SRC Academic Rep who goes to many of the high-level meetings to let me know what was going on. But she was either very bored by everything, or just being incredibly cagey. It was fine the way it was, because there was very little pressure to find stories. But if this hadn’t been the case, it might have been interesting to see what we came up with. In the end all of my stories were news stories of varying degrees of hardness. At the beginning we brain-stormed ideas for a range of different feature articles. In the end, I think we only produced one or two between the whole agency.
Researching the story
The wonderful thing about having a surplus of story possibilities was that you got to pick and choose stories that interested you. This made researching the story – be it with interviews or going along to an event – a much more interesting, painless business.
I really appreciated the experience I got in interviewing people. It is wonderful when you can interview someone in such a way that it’s not really an interview but rather an in-depth discussion between the two of you about something which you both have reason to be interested in. On two occasions the person that I interviewed said that they had really enjoyed the interview because it made them think about what was being discussed in a different way, or from a different perspective.
It also made a big difference if I could maintain an engagement with the person before, during and after the event, with email correspondence, face-to-face communication, and phone calls. Often it took ages to pin a person down, but rather than being annoyed people seem to really appreciate this ongoing communication. It also means you get to know them a bit, and makes interviews and correspondence easier because there is some level of personal engagement on both sides. I also always made it clear that I was on their side – if they wanted to see it before it got published, I sent it to them and I always sent the published article to them afterwards.
Researching stories was made much more effective by working around a specific beat and focusing only on certain kinds of stories that interested me. This was because there was often a little bit of overlap, which allowed me to have a slightly different perspective, and to ask question with a bit of background knowledge. I was also more aware of all the developments in this beat, and could refer to what I knew. This made me come across as knowledgeable and informed, and clearly impressed sources. For instance, everyone kept referring to how things were going to change when the VC got involved, and I as able to talk about his trip overseas and exactly when he would be getting back to sort things out. For the Academic Development story, I could talk about what Russell Kaschula had said about the issue when I interviewed him for the Translate@thon story, and what Leonhard Praeg had said in his lecture. These kind of connections were great for building confidence and making me come across as well informed and ‘in the know’, which really made people open up more and take me seriously.
Writing the stories
It was amazing how quickly my writing has improved across this term. I don’t think the finished products were that much better, but the process of putting a story together became much easier and quicker. It also made researching stories much easier – I knew exactly what I was looking for, and didn’t waste time on unnecessary sidetracks. Also, looking back at the stuff I wrote at the beginning of the term, there’s a lot of stuff I wanted to change. Is this what always happens when you have a bit of retrospective perspective, or did I become a better writer? Regardless, going back and reading stuff after a few days is definitely a fantastic way to improve writing.
Marketing the stories
This was by far my weakest area. Although I published most of my stories in some or other form, there were a number of problems, and I could have had my work much more widely published.
The first big problem was that I insisted on sending all of my articles to Activate. This was just the easiest, simplest option for me, because I write for the paper all the time anyway (although I’m not officially a part of it), and I know everyone involved. I’ve also been writing for them for the last two years. And I have a long-standing feud with the editor of Oppie Press. I realised that I shouldn’t have been sending my stories to Activate, and it was made very clear, time and again. My articles were badly subbed, or often not even included in the print edition. There were a number of reasons why this happened.
Firstly, I have a very different idea of what constitutes a worthwhile story compared to the Activate editors. I would argue that I have a better idea of what constitutes a good story, but this is not the place to debate this. I also write in a very different style to what they expect. This means that my stories have to be automatically reformatted. I refuse to conform to their house style, and it’s obvious that I shouldn’t be writing for them if I can’t do this. Yet I still do. I am too loyal.
My articles were probably also a bit long. I tended to get very interested and write very long, involved articles. I don’t know whether or not this is a good thing. I didn’t feel like I was including unimportant or completely superfluous detail. But it did mean that often everything except the bare facts had to be removed. I should really have had better communication with the editors to find out exactly how many words they wanted.
Another problem was that I didn’t take pictures. This almost certainly made it more difficult to get stories published. No matter how good the story is, in Activate it seems that a story without a picture will usually lose out to one with a picture. I was so frustrated by this at one stage that I ordered a R5000 camera from the US.
The last problem was that I didn’t market my stories to other papers. At three of the events I went to there were representatives from all the other local and regional papers. When I read the stories they wrote, they were usually much worse than the ones I had written. But some of mine were never published in print, not even in Activate. I could have easily just offered to write stories for Mike Loewe or for Grocott’s. And I will never get over how irritating it is that there are stories about Rhodes which Activate isn’t interested in printing even though The Herald is.
Working in a group
Our groupwork definitely benefited from the fact that there were just four of us, and we were all quite passive but reasonably well motivated. There was almost no competition over stories, and everyone cooperated easily. There was no pressure on anyone to contribute, and for the most part this was fine.
One possible source of tension which never really materialised was the fact that Ian, as Content Editor for Activate, was partly responsible for choosing whether my stories got printed or not. There was never any tension about this, and its probably just the kind of people we are – reasonably non-confrontational.
The groupwork was very useful for story conceptualising and planning sources, etc. Although I helped a couple of times with contacts for the other group members’ stories, I worked completely independently for all of mine.
Ian did help a bit with marketing the stories, and also subbed a few of them. This was helpful, but not in any way essential. We felt compelled to get a bit more involved in each other’s work than we otherwise would have, because of the idea of the ‘News Agency’. However on such a small scale, and with so much time, it made more sense to work fairly independently. There was no real structural basis to our group work, apart from the need to avoid clashing on stories and maybe contribute story ideas.