If only journos could offer their skills to citizen journalists

Fear of the unknown is a natural occurrence. I’m personally no saint when it comes to this. I remember when I first landed in Grahamstown. All sorts of emotional uncertainties about this new world kept playing back in my head. See, I’m a big city girl and even though the Eastern Cape is home, staying in a small town like Grahams town seemed to be a potential challenge for me then.

My point for exposing myself is because recently, I’ve been chatting with some of my mates, who happen to be former journalist. From all the philosophies we managed to share, I’ve realised that it will take years for media workers to acknowledge that citizen journalism is an ideology playing out in the media sphere. For now, I’ll point fear as the culprit for the uncertainties my colleagues often display when citizen media pops up.

Journalists are clearly still sceptical of what citizens can produce. The citizens’ integrity when reporting is often questioned and journalists are quick to jump the gun that they are inadequately trained about media principles and ethics. And so, they cannot report news with the same integrity, objectivity, fairness and truthfulness essential as reporting protocols. Even digital media is lambasted by some, who would rather prefer their tradition newspaper sold at street corners. Digital media is another agenda for another day and I won’t digress.

Websites such as Ushahidi.com and OhmyNews international are defining the trends of citizen reporting. They are indicators that with the right resources, citizen media can be realised in our media and social spheres.

Now when I talk about resources, I’m not turning to mobile phones and internet resources and infrastrures. I’m simply referring to training institutions which can accelerate the maturity of citizen media.

Take a look at reporter.co.za, the first website to allow citizens to write stories as they see them. The initiative is the brainchild of media company, Avusa media (former Johnnic communications). The company took the task of providing the training and mentoring to the citizen journalist who form part of the website network. 20 journalists from the company who are skilled in different areas facilitate the mentoring of the citizens, who send in stories that are of particular interest to them and their communities.

Since its inception a few years ago, it has become a major success, because it has managed to provide professional journalism training and tools of modern technology to ordinary citizens.

Now rhetorical explanations such as inadequate training of citizens in reporting are rather irrelevant, if for development’s sakes, mainstream media companies could lend their resources for the training of citizens. And I’m not suggesting for a Take a Citizen Journalist to Work initiative! Although it might work…

Instead of being reclusive behind old communication models and being sceptical of change and developments in new forms of telling news, media companies should rather make available resources which could do some justice to citizens who want to tell their stories.

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