RUTV 3

Morning of 1 in 9 protest

By: Chwayitisa Nandisa Futshane and Bradley Janssen

For the past few months Grocotts Mail has been training a group of citizen journalists on the basic principles of journalism such as gathering stories, verifying information, sources and writing articles on the various stories that they gather around their communities. Citizen journalism is effectively becoming a very important element of journalism as everyday people with no formal training are gathering news on issues that affect their own communities, stories that professional journalists wouldn’t otherwise write about. This term is often called hyper-local stories. In a town like Grahamstown, where Grocotts Mail is the only source of local Grahamstown based news, the work of citizen journalists will become more and more important as they gather stories that affect the entire Grahamstown area and give the towns citizens a platform to have their voices heard.

Our tasks then was to assist one of the citizen journalists and teach them the principles of filming video stories, that they could film using their cell phones, edit at Grocotts and then upload onto the Grocotts website. Most of today’s basic cell phones have cameras that have some sort of video function which the can use to capture the stories. Since their cell phones are with them where ever the go it allows them to capture quickly and on the move. It was thus important that they were taught the skills that will help them to film better videos.

We started working with Jean Pretorius, setting a quick introductory meeting with him to map out our journey over the next few weeks. We held a workshop to give some pointers on how to best utilise his cell phone, which is the Samsung D700. We also gave him a few tasks to accomplish before the first workshop so that we could see where he would need the most assistance. He had to film at least three different ten second videos, which we would then look at and evaluate in terms of his use of natural light, the angles he shot the video at and his general understanding of video filming.  The clip he eventually uploaded on Grocotts was a short story on the new classrooms that were built at Good Shepherd School.

Besides the basics of angles, position, camera work, lightning and sound we also delved deeper into filming techniques with the five-sequence. This is a close-up shot of the hands, close-up of the face, over-the-shoulder shot, a wide shot and any other extra shots, which are always great to take because they can be used together during editing.

We discussed his various interests and the kinds of stories he would like to cover and decided to do a story on the one-in-nine campaign. We also looked at the various shots that he should aim to get as well as recording the atmosphere throughout the day. Although we had some communication problems, both sides of the team pulled together and met a few days later to work on editing his story and discussed the principle of “writing to picture.” This is means writing narration for the story so that it matches the footage that was available to us.

Jean Pretorius uses his cell phone to shoot videos and take photos.

It was important to teach Jean these various skills because as a citizen journalist, he will need to utilise these skills to write multi-media stories on the Grocotts website, so that the reader can have full experience of a particular story through video, sound and the article itself. What is great is that there is free software out there like Windows Movie Maker and Audacity, which he can use in future endeavours.

Our contribution to this project will hopefully help to ensure that Grahamstown has more dynamic citizen journalists who fully utilise the resources they have available to them. This is especially true as journalism is a dynamic industry and this is that latest phenomenon.

Location of 1 in 9 protest campaign

Click on map to go to the story of the 1 in 9 protest campaign

Take a look at the quick synopsis of what we did with Jean Pretorius

But wait there is more, Jean Pretorius: Current Grocotts Mail Citizen Journalist

A small glimpse into the life of a grahamstown Police woman: Inspector William’s as she shares some of her brave and heart rendering experiences. By ayushi Chabbra, Tamsin George and Viktoria Marinova.

This brave woman breaks the silence

During our attempt at Public journalism we learnt the importance of civic mapping and the vital importance of allowing the people of the community to set the agenda. The point of public journalism is to give people a voice in order to defy the spiral of silence that conventional journalism tends to perpetuate. Public journalism through a grass roots approach aims to create awareness and thus bring about change. To do this we held a focus group meeting where we asked members of the community what crimes they feared most. It was discovered that rape was the most feared and even the men agreed. 

After two weeks of civic mapping within extension six to nine in Grahamstown we found two brave women who were willing to tell their stories and speak out against rape. This was particularly relevant considering that one of the issues in the community was one where people were too afraid to report crime as well as to blow the whistle against crime in the community.

The difficulties we faced regards desire for her anonymity, as to protect her from any re-victimisation as well as from any further emotional suffering our intervention and representation of her may cause. Another importance of public journalism is bridging the gaps between different spheres of the community. Thus we invited a social worker and psychologist to our community meeting, not only to bridge these gaps but also to act as a mediator between community members who attended and the women on which our documentaries are based. This clip is from a documentary in which a brave woman tells her story.

You may have watched our video on the Get home safe project. A new report gives some of the stats around the problem. They are really shocking. RUTV reporter Matthew Mpahlwa  goes into detail to bring you more on this story.

It is probably uncontroversial to state that all university campuses struggle with containing and controlling alcohol consumption by their students, since the age at which students first enter such institutions is an age of freedom and experimentation, where young people have the opportunity to test the limits previously set by parents and schools. This story attempts to address this gap by reporting on a survey of alcohol usage patterns at Rhodes University (in Grahamstown), the smallest tertiary institution in South Africa, with an annual enrolment of just under 6000 students. This story provides a brief overview of strategies which the University has adopted in recent years in an attempt to control alcohol usage and alcohol abuse, as well as describing the local context, which is also relevant to student drinking behaviour. While the level of drinking at Rhodes University is possibly no higher than that at any other University in South Africa, it does have a rather undesirable reputation as the “drinking university”, and the reason for this is twofold: firstly, the drinking behaviour is highly visible, because of the size of the town, and because of the location of many off-campus pubs and bars near to the university. This means that Rhodes students pursue their after-hours relaxation in a very concentrated, small area like Rhodes University.

As a result of this situation, the Dean of Students Office initiated the Get Home Safe Project, to serve as safety net for students to arrive home safely after long hours of drinking. They will be driven home by student volunteers who are on stand -by on all night. During week days they operate from  Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10:00 pm to 3:00 am in the morning.

For more information on the Get Home Safe project you can visit the Dean of Students website using the following link :  http://www.ru.ac.za/deanofstudents

Our reporter, Camalita Naicker speaks to Nyx McLean founder of GAP about elections, Zuma, Malema and COPE.

Mahreen Chenia speaks to GAP’s, Deborah Robertson about the ANC’s failed attempts at creating awareness of Women’s rights, the upcoming elections and the future of South Africa in light of a Jacob Zuma presidency.