Answering Questions and ideas.
Not talking about Haas, more about our understanding of Public Journalism.
What is it? What is our understanding.
Going into a community - issues within community and trying to report on these, and reporting back to communities and asking what they thought. Providing a platform for people to do things themselves as opposed to relying on those in power.
Instead of writing 'about' and imposing, we work 'with' and form solutions. It's not just a presentation of facts, its a forming of solutions.
A bottom up approach at the grassroots level. We are trying to help not necessarily expose.
People were more personal - as journalists we were more sincere than usual. Perceptions changed.
People expect a watchdog, but is that more of a public perception or a perception we created and learnt?
The method this time around has been different: its a hybrid of previous learning and public journalism.
The people within the community are our main sources. It's an inversion of the norm. We put the 'people' in charge, the elite are no longer the primary definers.
This project has focused on what some feel like Journalism should be about. What should we be doing? Instead of observation or commentary we are ensuring progress; we are there to help.
But there is a danger of being relied upon - as if you have all the solutions!
Sometimes Journalism is happy? Sometimes we don't pursue stories based on complaints or problems, sometimes people have stories and we approach these people based on that rather than attacking them with questions.
It's very hard to write stories about people in suburbs, oddly enough.
A key difference between regular journalism and public journalism is the fact that we produce and then receive feedback before publishing. It's a new form of journalism because no-one has done this before. It can be detrimental to your stories if you're required to censor your stories. People are often trying to hide the truth or protect their organisations. However, there is an identity transformation by getting feedback on the perceptions you've portrayed in your stories. People are very good at voicing their opinions but when it comes to making a difference and taking action, people become apathetic.
Perhaps our method of advertising was flawed. In Ward 11, we did not mention that we were affiliated with Grocotts Mail so perhaps people did not take us seriously and therefore did not attend our public meeting.
We should have done more work on our civic mapping becasue we did not contact the head of the residents association. Furthermore, we did not have the same entusiasm and energy for the ward 11 publci meeting as we did for ward 12.
Some people rely on the journalists to solve their problems instead of being excited to solve the problems themselves. Our posters said "Help us to help you" which could have been a little too strong. There's only so much that students can do to help the community. We don't have funding to help with major problems but we can help to faciliate public debate. When we approached the municipality, we didn't even get a response, let alone money or solutions.
A big prblem is that once you receive all the complaints, you narrow down the subject matter to only a few complaints to write stories on. Some people feel left out and wonder why other stories are more important than theirs. However, the point of public journalism is to spark debate, to make people aware of the issues.
This course may have worked better if we used contacts and relationships formed from previous years. It's difficult to built relationships from scratch each year and perhaps we would be able to make a difference if we could start from where other groups left off.
We need some form of support from organisations or people in the community. In order to sustain the solutions and relationships. It's not necessarily about creating change, but rather building community engagement and helping people form their own civic organisations.
There are some things that citizens can solve, some problems need governmental help.
Journalists should only get involved to a certain extent; if they go beyond thier call of duty, it no longer can be considered journalism, but volunteer community engagement.
By finding financial aid from around the community we create a social capital in the communities.
Normally, people would put the story straight into print etc. and leave it there. By showing the process of our stories, we have built up stronger leads and enriched our overall production.
The modal we have 'created' is interesting in that it gives the public hope when they see problems being solved and initiatives being started.
Some students have found the community issues traumatizing; this is disheartening and depressing. Some feel that they are exploiting the communities for a story and a good mark.
Is this sort of journalism impossible in a country with so many intensive issues? Can our efforts make a difference? We feel that this sort of job could not be done without a true vocation.
There is a lot riding on the journalists shoulders, if we go looking for problems we must be prepared to work to find solutions.
This is why many groups have moved Haas's model forward by personally aiding the commuities. But what is the point of reporting if we try to solve the problems ourselves?
By doing the work ourselves AND reporting on it, it does still show that work needs to be done; showing the inequalities between different parts of the greater communities.
We can help personally AND put pressure on intitutional powers to get involved; also catalyse action within the communities to help themselves. It can give the communities a sense of pride and can spark initiative within them.
Disheartening to try to get people involved in the problem, especially in a town that is notoriously apathetic. If the obvious route to taking the story further find another way to expose the neglect/incompetence. A change of tactics is not always a bad idea.
The three stories covered in ward 11 are very different and do not mesh together. The stories covered were not stories that came about in the public meeting as the people in the ward are very dispondent and did not attend the meeting, perhaps because the ward 11 meeting was neglected and over-shadowed by the ward 12 meeting.
What could be done differently? Get important people/ people who are involved and know the community involved so that they can help with finding stories and getting us in contact with the right people.
A lot of possitive things coming out of the meetings/stroies in the last week as opposed to the beginning of the course as it was very difficult to get the stories off the ground.
It would be helpful if the journalsim department kept contacts that previous years had built up. This would help in terms of continuity of stories and existing relationships that have already been developed with the community.
