Reflection on our podcast

The most important thing that I can say about our group is that it was a learning curve for me. I think I had gotten used to the whole thing of working on campus with on campus sources that I got too comfortable. Moving out of my comfort zone therefore was a bit of a challenge in terms of locating sources and finding stories, it required me to go out there and find out what is going on in the wider Grahamstown.


The main challenge that we faced was getting sources because people were either not available or they wouldn’t respond to our e-mails which made it quite difficult to put together our stories in proper manner that we would have liked to. What I have learned out of this is to make appointments with people on time and confirm closer to the time if they are still available. Another thing that is worth remembering is to have alternative sources so that if you get disappointed by one person it does not mean that the story is dead.


In terms of content I think for the most part we have met the standard of our agency document even though we did not follow every rule in the book. We have acted as facilitators in the community by keeping the authorities accountable, informing ordinary people and by giving a voice to the marginalised. For example in our story about the closing of the Old Goal we spoke to the cleaners who are going to lose their jobs if the Old Goal does close, we also spoke to director of Makana Tourism who dwelt on the implications of the closing of the Old Goal.


However we could have done more in terms of covering the other stories in such a way that they represent the ordinary people in society and that they are also educational to the community. I do believe that in the next round we are now capable of doing much better than we did this time because we will have learnt from all the mistakes we have made now.