Closing the circle

By Kate Bishop

Through our focus group it is evident that practising public journalism in South Africa is considerably different to Haas’s philosophy for Public journalism. Due to the economical and political status of our country as well as the many different cultures it makes it difficult to assume that people are treated equally and have the same footing in society. Through our public journalism as the WEDP group, we found that people most responded to seeing themselves in photographs. That itself created some form of discussion. The articles aimed at informing the community about the negative and positive aspects that they are facing.

Our final distribution process incorporated Haas’s idea of the journalist becoming involved in the problem solving process. We have started a campaign, “donate a pen and page” for the crèche, which will be continued after the JDD course is complete. We have complied a pamphlet that is a “how to” guidebook for the community. We looked at the areas in the community that most needed help and focused on them in our guide. Due to the lack of building resources and housing issues we researched how to make your own bricks and your own house using those bricks. Our second focus was how to make your own vegetable garden and how to make your own fertilizer. We found this important because Riebeeck East is so far away that it is important that people know how to create a self sustaining lifestyle. Lastly, our focus was on the school, we researched Universities and community colleges and technicons in the Eastern Cape and listed what courses they all offered. This was important to us because so many of the students that we spoke to wanted to get out of Riebeeck East and further their education, but did not have the facilities to find out more.