Journal Entry 14- Personal Self- Evaluation

At this midpoint of the trip, as we come close to ending our internships, one of the things I have now truly understood is the meaning of the media being for the people, by the people and of the people. A place like Bush Radio where the focus is the people and not what companies had to say really impressed me. As journalists our roles are nothing more than servants of the community, for it is to them we owe information and an explanation. Whatever we were being taught in our classroom I am finally able to experience it first-hand in South Africa having only worked in UAE-based media, which is regulated by the government. In Dubai, journalists have become used to the culture where corporations can tell you that knowing a certain something is not your business. There is a difference between networking and bending to someone’s whims and at Bush Radio everything is looked at thrice over.

In terms of my expectations, I think I had expected to see how journalism really works outside of the censored grounds of the UAE and I found freedom and frankness in attacking issues here. It also fit in my agenda in understanding the needs of South Africans from the media. It is a part of what I had said that I hoped to achieve in my essays before coming here.

I have had a lot of help in terms of the reading material and the pre-departure orientation. But in order to truly get an audience, I did a bit of my own research. I first talked about my concerns with the other interns. They being around my age could tell me what the youth in South Africa could relate to. I talked to the more senior staff and talked with them about aspects they considered important to air, the hook and values that listeners appreciated. I also took into factor the timings of the shows. Sakhisizwe aired in the afternoons, which meant our listern-ship would be considerably different from any other time slot. The same went for Tech Talk, which was aired at around 2pm on Saturdays, just after the children’s show and during the time families get together for lunch. I also asked for Busi’s opinion on current topics as her show truly deals with them in a straightforward manner. Guests who came in provided their take on their specialty just before we went on air.

Fortunately we had standard internet connection at the station and that allowed me to check up on facts, go through blogs by South Africans and read news articles for ideas. A lot of times I would follow on the lead of a source or guest about a story and pursue it for either of the shows. It was from one of our guests, a member of Global Changemakers, I learnt about the World Economic Forum on Africa 2009.

Of course there were many obstacles that I encountered. Any request that has to be made requires a lot of diplomacy and not simple straightforwardness as the idea of time-is-money does not apply to South African business conduct. People may change plans and not get back to you. It also depends on how important you organization was. Thankfully most people living in Cape Town recognized and knew about Bush Radio and made it a point to drive down, even all the way from Khayelitsha, to do an interview.

For Tech Talk, since technology is a fast growing but small sector in South Africa, finding legitimate companies with unique products was difficult and I often conducted interviews on the day that my clip was due. It led to some extremely stressful situations and a lot of times I ended up staying till 9pm, four hours after my co-interns had left for the day. Time management was definitely a struggle but as time progressed I did get better at it.