My first Citizen Journalism class at local Grahamstown community newspaper Grocott’s Mail (GM) is history. Eleven participants this morning learned what a citizen journalist is, what news is and how they can generate their own story ideas.

It’s exciting to be part of the project named Iindaba Ziyafika (The news is coming). “The project focuses on developing innovative ways of using new media technologies to facilitiate community journalism, and is funded by a grant from the US-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation“, explains the GM website concisely.

Part of the training were a number of practical exercises and a slideshow.

Course outline

Week 1: What is Grocott’s Mail about? What is a citizen reporter?
Week 2: A nose for news: what is newsworthy? Basics of good journalism.
Week 3: Writing a publishable news story: the lead and story structures.
Week 4: Interviews, observation, sources, facts and ethics.
Week 5: Photography: how to take better photos with your cellphone. Introduction to basic photo editing.
Week 6: Producing citizen journalism.

GM is excited about the potential that the Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism Newsroom holds for encouraging and empowering all citizens of Grahamstown to more actively engage in debates and discussions about important issues in their lives through producing and publishing their own original content. In short, the Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism Newsroom is intended to foster a keener sense of community awareness, involvement and, ultimately, pride.

Links

For more information please visit the GM website, the Citizen Journalism Newsroom info page and the productions of the previous course.

By Zimkhitha Mbunge

Applications for the third Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism course close at 5pm on Monday 15 February – go to www.grocotts.co.za/cj to register now.
The course, which is free of charge, takes place in the Grocott’s Mail Citizen Journalism newsroom, and will run for six weeks, from Monday 22 February to Thursday 1 April 2010, from 9am to 11am.

Four groups of 10 participants each will complete the course – one group for each day of the week.

Participants need to have basic computer skills to take part in the course, which will cover a variety of topics geared at turning ordinary citizens into citizen journalists.

Participants will be taught the basics of good journalism, how to write a publishable news story, how to set up and conduct interviews, and how to take good photos with your cellphone.

Course trainer Elvira van Noort says, “I expect this course to be another success story. Participants will leave with a fine set of skills and knowledge that they can apply to assist their community from a grassroots level.
Issues they can focus on range from health, education and crime to service delivery. The plan is to stir the pot a bit.”

Three or four outstanding course participants will also have the opportunity of sitting in on Grocott’s Mail diary meetings after the course is finished.
These star reporters will get the chance to keep on writing for the newspaper and will receive remuneration for their efforts.

Participants in the previous two courses had a variety of stories published, which can all be read in the MyStory section on the Grocott’s Mail website (www.grocotts.co.za).

A themed campaign dealing with the issue of waste management in Grahamstown   Ukucoca eMakana (Makana Clean-up) – saw many wellthought out stories accompanied by photographs being produced and published by course participants towards the end of last year.

If you’re the type of person who takes interest in what’s happening around you and you love telling stories, this course is for you. You can use the skills you’ll learn to tell Grahamstown about the interesting people and happenings in your community or in your organisation.

For more information and to register for the course,visit www.grocotts.co.za/cj or come in to Grocott’s Mail (40 High Street) to fill in a form.

The search for funders is ongoing. We apply with Hivos, FreeVoice, OSISA and Samdef on a regular basis. It is not easy to receive funding but we keep our hopes up. We are now moving quicker, producing more and more interesting research proposals, to different funders to ensure that we can work on a project this year.

There is still a lot to research within the  Southern African media landscape, especially when it comes to mobile media and using new media for social justice and activism. EvN will continue writing research proposals that aim to uplift the standards of journalism and fight for the voiceless in 2010.

In 2009 EvN extended its practical skills on multiple media platforms, including mobile. Keeping up-to-date with new media technologies and social media is necessary to grow EvN into a company that keeps on the foreground of offering new media solutions to media companies and media projects. The year also presented many new insights with projects related to press freedom and digital activism.

2010

EvN in 2010 will keep on offering the friendly, quick and professional service you are used to. With the World Cup on the calendar it will be a more dynamic year and it is anticipated that EvN will this year work with new clients from all over the world.

EvN Media Solutions in 2010 will continue to offer the following services:

• multimedia productions of hard and soft news  from Southern Africa and The Netherlands
• editing of (South African) English and Dutch articles
• newsroom management during multimedia projects
• newsroom assistance
• academic research into new/ social/ mobile media
• lectures, workshop and master classes about new media/ social media/ journalism skills/ Southern Africa
• media consultancy & Southern Africa travel consultancy
• translating of text from (South African) English to Dutch
• …and much much more…

Please get in touch via our Contact page, we would love to hear from you!

All the best in 2010,

EvN – Media Solutions

DCI 4.0 PRESS RELEASE

The fourth Digital Citizen’s Indaba (DCI) takes place on 5 – 6 September at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, just before the University’s annual Highway Africa conference. DCI is an annual event that brings together bloggers, online and mobile journalists, citizen reporters, new media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives. The purpose of DCI is to encourage citizen participation in debate about the state of digital media, information sharing and skills transfer using experts in the field. It encourages the use of new media take-up by non-journalists.

THEME
The theme of this year’s DCI is ‘Digital civil society and journalism in Africa’. There has been an explosion of new media at civil society level. Issues around land rights and access to housing and water are finding their way into the digital public sphere. Violence monitoring by civil society has become easier, as mapping technology can be used to warn people about outbreaks of violence. Maps are being used to inform citizens about where to access medicines, and they may warn against shortages in access to essential treatment such as antiretrovirals. As a result of growing civil society usage of new media, mainstream media have a broader array of information to
draw on, and are able to take up issues that would not have otherwise have found their way into the public domain.

LINE-UP
The DCI line-up includes keynote speaker Dubissi Tande, a prolific blogger on African affairs, who will be speaking on the state of social justice digital media in Africa. Elia Varela Serra (Maneno.org) together with Bolivian Voices editor Eduardo Ávila Maneno will enlighten us on the ever pertinent topic of promoting indigenous languages in digital media. Another panel with Nthateng Mhlambiso (Behind the Mask) and Maureen Agena (Women of Uganda Network) focuses on gender, civil society and digital media.

Civil society’s use of mapping tools will be explored by Bobby Soriano (Tactical Tech), Brett Davidson (Stop Stockouts) and Ndesjano Macha (Global Voices). The ways in which technology can be used to promote activism around land, environment and health will be discussed with Stephan Hofstatter (freelance journalist), Peter Benjamin (Cell-Life), Ednah Karamagi (BROSDI) and Bobby Marie (Monitoring Action).

WORKSHOPS
DCI 4.0 this year offers six workshops to ensure that all delegates will, besides knowledge, take practical skills back home to assist communities with digital activism and social justice on a local level. The workshop titles are “Multimedia Tools for Journalism” (Peter Verweij, Hogeschool Utrecht), “Digital Voices to Reconstruct Communities” (Marlon Parker, CPUT), “Successful Podcasting” (Jayne Morgan, Podcart.co.za), “Mapping Tools for Civil Society Use” (Ndesanjo Macha, Global Voices), “Using Mobile Media for Social Change” (Peter Benjamin, Cell-Life) and “Bringing Down the Barriers with Interactive Audio Programming and Mobile Phones” (Brenda Burrell, Kubatana.net).

CONTACT US
Visit the DCI website (www.dcindaba.com) for live updates and more information.
You can also find us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dcindaba or use #DCI09 to search for DCI Tweets. Contact the DCI team via the website or email to dcindaba@gmail.com.

For me it is time to get ready for what is now publicly known as a circus. This one does not involve tigers, elephants or horses but just a whole lot of clowns, acrobats and jugglers. Its our own media circus in the African Media Matrix building at Rhodes University.

CueBlog
Cue Media is an amalgamation of media platforms that report on Festival. It is the ultimate real-life learning experience for newspaper, TV, radio, photography and online students.

Its now my third year of involvement and I have to admit that these ten days are marked in my calendar with rainbow colours and some festive, albeit childish, balloons and flowers. I’ll be editing CueBlog, the latest edition to Cue Media.

The idea of CueBlog originated in 2007 and comes from Prof Peter Verwey who lectures at the Dutch School of Journalism in Utrecht. It started as a convergence project, to see if it was possible to merge the separate existing newsrooms to make them more efficient. Why not re- and pre-purpose material? Why not use photographs from CuePix as a slideshow with added sound from CueRadio? Well, CueOnline is set in its own ways so we conjured up a whole new platform to show that we are able to converge all the different media and still do our own additional reporting.

Convergence Challenges
And so CueBlog was born in 2007 and with the help of Dutch students and a group of Highway Africa News Agency reporters we were off to a quick start. We didn’t foresee some of the challenges. The daily converged diary meetings did not work as well as we hoped and there was a lack of understanding from the other platforms. Why do we need a blog, don’t we have online already? Are they just going to use our content and that’s it? Do they really need a space in the newspaper to show off their most read posts?

Moving Forward
In 2008 the relations changed dramatically. It was the same-old challenges for the first two or three days but after some well-thought over chitchat with the other editors we finally felt as though we were becoming part of Cue Media. First of all, we got our column in the newspaper, secondly we also received National Arts Festival goodies, thirdly we managed to get some of our stories linked to stories from the newspaper and vice versa, we also sold three advertisements (a clear indication that we are taking this blogging seriously and we are also able to add to the pot).

For this year’s edition of CueBlog we have decided to start on the right foot. We are not in competition with CueOnline and will therefore this year collaborate more closely then ever before. One Dutch student from the blog will team up with one online student on a daily basis and make a multimedia production for both platforms. This exchange of skills and knowledge should be an important underlying characteristic of the whole project, just as testing the boundaries of convergence is.

It’s back!
This year the much-loathed daily converged diary meetings return. But for now we’ll just call it the “editors teatime” as to not enforce that scary word ‘convergence’ into anyone’s mind. It does not make sense to run separate newsrooms that are under the same heading without knowing what everyone is doing. Off course a CMS would sort this out but with no funding for that we will continue working with the good-old folder based system.

We have also purchased Cue Media shirts, just to visually become a part of the circus.

I’ll be posting updates on the NaFest CueBlog project on this site as we go. In the meantime, if you have any enquiries or comments about CueBlog you can get in touch with me.

Cheers,
Elvira

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Back in French Guyana we stayed in Kourou (to find out we’re missing out on a rocket launch by days) and took a catamaran to Iles du Salut, three islands in the Caribbean sea that were used as a penal colony by the French.

It turned out to be on of the highlights of our trip, not only was it our first swim in the sea but we also slept in a jail cell JUST LIKE BACK HOME!

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Swinging palm trees, a constant 28 degrees, blue sea waters and the ruins of the penal colony scattered across the islands. Macabre, intriguing and beautiful at the same time.

Thousands of inmates were held in deplorable conditions, most of them died. We had a chance to sling our hammocks in one of the cell blocks, amidst the ambiance of death, despair and magical escape stories like Pampillon’s.

We swam close to the shark infested part of the sea where the dead inmates were thrown in. Brian picked up some odd looking stones of the sea’s bottom (bones?!) and walked into isolation cells at night, being scared only by one far-jumping Agouti.

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It was a great experience and we should have maybe stayed a bit longer…

We are now in Cayenne, its our final couple of days in the Guyanas. The trip has been doubley-awesome and we’ll forever look back at it as happy and good times. We arrive in France on Tuesday morning and in Holland around midnight. Looking forward to seeing you all again and to start planning our wedding ceremony. CHEERS TO NEW ADVENTURES!

Love,

Elvira and Brian

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The newspapers I had a closer look at in Suriname are: De Ware Tijd, The Times of Suriname and Dagblad Suriname, in Guyana I bought Stabroek News and Kaieteur News.

Unfortunately the journalistic skills seem to still be very basic, there is a lack of investigative stories and stories are often unbalanced and not to the point. Besides some hints and tips I’ve compiled a list of story ideas, just some articles and topics that I thought are missing in the Guyanese papers. And yes, I am willing to travel back and write them all  

The list
-    STINASU (Suriname Nature Conservation): what are they doing about mismanagement in Bronsberg Nature Reserve and why are the people from Bronsweg village angry with the staff at the Reserve? Something smells fishy here…

-    What is being done about illegal gold and diamond mining in the interior? We spend four days in Bronsberg Nature Reserve and heard dynamite explosions and gun shots (apparently people are illegally hunting for bush meat)

-    Deeper into the interior, from say Atjoni onwards, there is a problem with safety regulations on the water. Boatmen are not supposed to be on the water after dark, it is too dangerous (especially with tourists and children), but this practice is still  happening

-    The fast flowing river is by many villages used as a waste bin. Great if you are one of the villages at the top of the river but not so nice when you are downstream. Plastic is an issue, make an investigative report about the situation as is and look at the long-term implications

-    Write about this little annoying habit of ‘bakra-tax’. This self-imposed tax means that white people have to pay a bit extra on groceries, clothing and booze. The habit is laughed at but becoming more of an issue with the increasing amounts of (white) tourists

-    Do a check-up on the health clinics in the interior: are there really runny smoothly? Do an investigation into malaria, dengue and other tropical disease

-    There is an increasing amount of Chinese people setting up shop in the interior. The villagers are happy because the Chinese food is cheaper but the Surinamese shopkeepers are struggling to make a living. There is a stunning emotional story to be written here

Educate and localise news
-    Try educate Surinamese people about animals and nature. There are many misconceptions. I can give one example, it took place in Nickerie. A local Rasta captured a young Anaconda while it was eating one of its chickens. Rasta people use the snake oil for medical treatments, so he kept it in a blue drum. As visitors we were allowed a peek into the drum. I asked a local onlooker “Is that an Anaconda?”, his answer was: “No, this is a waterboa, I have seen the movie Anaconda and those kind of snakes we don’t have here!”.  Ai

-    Surinam harbours an eclectic amount of cultural differences that need to be celebrated. Why not make a weekly portrait series (with good photographs) of the things that are normal to some and unknown to others. What I mean? Well, a portrait series of men who walk around with a little singing bird in a cage (and treat those better then their wives) or a series about old men sitting at the Waterkant discussing politics. Maybe portraits of a number of Chinese shopkeepers, people who keep monkeys as pets, tour operators, frustrated road workers, Brazilian gold diggers and street gangs

-    What about serious science stories? Rockets are being launched in neighbouring country French-Guyana, scientific research with remarkable results is done in nature reserves: write about the outcomes

-    Try to localise news. For instance, the news about the world economy and recession can easily be localised. Research the impact of the recession on Surinam or the Guyana’s on a big and small scale: the country’s economical growth and a shop owners’ turnover or people’s spending

-    In the case of Surinam, try to incorporate as many languages, peoples and cultures as possible. There are currently no newspapers who offer news in Chinese or news in Hindi. Also, there is not much (serious) news about China, India or Africa. Why not? You can also do a weekly immigrant’s profile

-    There is no explanation of political, economic and scientific terms. It is easy enough to highlight ten words used in the newspaper and to put them in a separate column (maybe on the puzzle page) with an explanation

-    Put citizens who are making a positive difference in the spotlight. A weekly profile with photo and small interview with that one person who has done something special to help the community

Involve your readers
-    Involve your readers by not just publishing their letters but also publishing short comments on previous articles and by involving them in choosing a citizen of the year, encourage them to send in photos and phone with news to a special hotline/ SMS number

-    Finally, as a journalist: get involved in your community, travel with local transport, visit the interior, keep networking and make sure you have good contacts with certain police and ministers and other key sources (and make sure they know it is you who makes the news, they can’t be writing their own articles).

All the newspapers have incredible potential but at the moment there is just not enough training and the budgets are too small. The above ideas might assist in unleashing some of the papers potential without costing to much effort and money.

Regards,
Elvira

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“I heard from some Brits it is possible to get to the falls via Bartica”, says Brian. Famous last words. We left by minibus taxi from Georgetown to Parika in the early hours of 18 April, to just miss the ferry to Bartica. We then managed to get into a speedboat and we reached Bartica at 12h. Just to hear that it was NOT possible to get to Kaieteur Falls over the road (taxi driver: “the road is…gone”) and to find out that the rapids are too crazy to go by river. We also missed the speedboat back and were therefore forced to sit back, relax, and use some local drinks.

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Sunday 19 April. Second try to get to Kaieteur Falls. We leave at 8am to catch the minibus taxi to Mahida. This time we are prepared. We know the trip is going to be over a bad road, including long waits (for the ferry) and that we will be extremely tired once we arrive so… we treated ourselves and stayed at a hotel with TV in the room and a big swimming pool outside!

Mahida was recognised as a town only 3 years ago. Its inhabitants are young and mostly male. They come from all walks of life but all have one goal: to get rich quickly. The gold rush and wild west feeling is hanging in the air. At dawn the dusty streets change, the shops stay open but now choose to play loud music and people drink, dance and laugh the night away.

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We meet with Tony and his wife. He is a gold diver and explains the works of the business to us. He is going to Kaieteur to set up a trading store. He is flying there…

On Monday 20 April it was time to move. From town we had to hike 7 kilometer to a landing to take a boat to Amatuk village. A local named Godfrey offered to bring us to the landing for way too much money so we walked. At the landing it was queit. No-one there but three boats.

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We sat and waited. Played some dominoes, watched the parrots cross the river and ate sardines on crackers. The sound of a motorised boat a couple of hours later came out of nowhere.

A rasta man, Henry, came from Amatuk to the landing to pick up gasoline. He offered us a lift to his village and his balcony for our hammocks. We never thought we would stay here for 3 nights.

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Our next stop is supposed to be a village called Waratuk, which is inside the Kaieteur National Park. One problem: the local captain can take us there but it will cost 20.000 Guyana Dollars + petrol. NO WAY, we thought, so we had to wait for a lift. It wasn’t that bad though: Amatuk has nothing on offer (except for some cool look-outs onto the Amatuk falls) but the family we stayed at proved to be really sweet.  We even had the chance to visit a gold and diamond mine in the jungle!

That mine is something else. A group of men, including two 14 year old kids, working under harsh conditions. Finding 2 ounce of gold in 4 days, no diamonds, trying to pump water and sift through mud… what a sight! I have to admit to Brian that while his way of traveling takes a bit longer we do encounter things that are real special and that no tourist would see…

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We got lucky on Thursday 23 April. A boat with three German tourists and their guide arrived with an organised overland tour in Amatuk. We got a lift to Waratuk (2 hours up the river) but spend it in the rain and…we almost hit a rock when the fuel ran out in the middle of a rapid. Brian shat his pants as  he watched what was happening from the back of the boat while I was in the front of the boat oblivious to the seriousness of the situation and jokingly looking for a paddle…

Waratuk is not much more then a rangers camp, its not a village at all. Here we met ranger Martin, who would give us a lift to the foot of the mountain the next day. We slept in our hammock after being attacked by flying ants and eating very little (good old sardines and crackers again) ’cause we forgot to pack properly for the trip… Luckily there is tasteful rain water and lollypops.

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Martin first brought the Germans and their guide, then paddled back and brought us plus two Amerindian ladies who were also hitching a ride. Halfway we got our first glimpse of the falls! But unlucky for us Martin ran out of fuel just two turns before the landing at the foot of the mountain. Will we ever make it to the falls?

We had to bushwalk through the jungle and its swamps. I am still recovering from the walk plus some embarressing climb over a log…I’m not giving details, sorry.

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The hike up to Kaiteur Falls is called the ‘Oh my God trail’. We now know why. It is only up. Brian climbed the mountain carrying our 20 kilogram backpack, so he’s my hero forever. I just complained, it really was too much. We did climb it in 2 hours and 50 minutes, which apparently is a really good time. The Amerindian ladies, I learned later, walked up barefoot and did it in one hour.

Once at the top we got lost, we couldn’t find the guesthouse. Hungry, dirty, tired and lost. It took 1.5 hours to find the guesthouse and I still had not seen the falls…

O YES! Those falls are something else! Wow! The amount of water, the height, the pull, the swifts…finally after ten days we got our look at the majestic Kaieteur Falls on Saturday 25 April and finally got a good sight of the famous Cock-on-the-rock bird.

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The motorbike drive through the dry savannas between Lethem and Nappi village takes about 1.5 hours, crested caracas fly over and giant ant eaters hide behind ant hills while the surroundings slowly change as we reach the Kanuku Mountains.

The transforming landscape is breathtaking as dust and sand replace dense forest trees with blooming orchids. This jungle is noisy: bell birds, howler monkeys and critters abound.

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At the luxury eco camp we make our plans: to see as many birds as we can and to do the hike to Jordan Falls, a hike that the guides have only done 10 other times with tourists this year. The cool forest left us mesmerised. Halfway we had a swim in a shallow creek: the bell bird still going, big blue butterflies above our heads and the clear water…we recognise paradise when we sit right in it.

Unfortunately we couldn’t stay longer then 3 days. The place is way too expensive (100 US dollar per day) but they are constructing a hammock camp for backpackers. If we ever return to this magical place it will probably be a lot busier and easier to reach…we’re thus glad to have found the place still quiet.

We are taking the minibus from Lethem to Georgetown today. We ran out of cash (major problem in Guyana: creditcards are not accepted and foreign cards only work at one bank in the capital city) and want to try to get to Kaieteur Falls without the use of a tour guide. Somehow I know that that is going to take a bit of time…

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