"I could see our correspondent making febrile notes.... he recognises there are some good stories there…" says Alan Rusbridger in this short film about our citizen reporting training programme at Activate South Africa.
He was referring to our Africa correspondent, David Smith. This of course was a comment made in jest by Alan- but what this does demonstrate, on a serious note, is that there is a wealth of stories out there we could be telling.
I wrote before about our plan to run citizen reporting training programs for marginalised voices. The first with communities from all over South Africa in the run up to Activate Johannesburg a few weeks ago, an event where we showcase our Open Journalism approach.
People came in with burning social issues that, perhaps, the national media were overlooking. Twenty attendees from Lesotho, Durban, Cape Town, Soweto and Johannesburg, attended a grueling Two-day training workshop, to help turn them into "citizen reporters”. The training covered storytelling, evidence-finding, verification and ethics, social media and ways to connect to us directly through our digital platforms such as GuardianWitness.
Tough stories were brought to the workshop. We heard about lives wrecked by the DIY drug “Whoonga”, the townships' secret rent boys, the plight of HIV orphans in Lesotho, the impact of gentrification in central Johannesburg and the community health impact of development in Durban.
During the two days of training we helped the group shape their story ideas in order to be “pitched" in a compelling and robust way to Alan and David. The aim was that the Guardian would investigate and cover some of what came up.
Directly after the session, however, Alan thought that all five stories, with development, could be run in the Guardian. Now contact has been made, David plans to investigate what these new "citizen reporters" have brought to our attention.
One thing in particular surprised me about the pitching session at activate– it was attended by most of South Africa’s national press. One journalist came up to me at the end and asked, “Are these stories the Guardian has first rights to cover? Because these are stories we should be covering really.” The answer is of course not. What’s important is that the stories get told.
