Journalism in my lifetime

On the 22nd of June I'll be writing my last exam, and on the very
same night I'll be boarding the 18:45 Greyhound coach from Grahamstown
to Johannesburg. I miss my daughter, her mom and my vegetable
garden. It is not easy to live far from my two year old daughter,
she needs me to teach her how to read and play computer games with
her. And her mom needs me to give her the love and appreciation she
deserves.

Furthermore, I'm going to spend the four weeks of vacation at Media
Park, the City Press office in Auckland Park, putting to the test
theoretical approaches I've learnt about the media and reporting. When
I left Joburg to come and study Journalism at Rhodes University I was
a bit naïve and thought journalism was about fighting the powers that
be on behalf of the poor. Little did I know that the media is not
primarily about giving a voice to the poor or challenging the status
quo. It is a business motivated by the profit motive.

I'll be going into the newsroom with a clear and yet incomplete
picture of what it means to be a reporter beyond the theorising of
lecturers and theorists. I have to learn as much as I can from the
actual practice of newspaper reporting in the four weeks I'll be at
City Press. At the end of the four weeks I'm going to tell my daughter
and her mom how I love them and thereafter return to Grahamstown for
term three and four.

For the rest of term three we will be doing pracs at the local Grocott's Mail newspaper. This newspaper was celebrating 140 years this year, and it will be a memorable experiene to work for the newspaper. I went around the township of Grahamstown and identified
some issues that I think are worth pursuing when I'm at Grocott's Mail.

In term four I will specialise in New Media, and when term four ends I will be looking forward to serving my year's internship at the City Press. In the meantime, let me go back to my study desk. I must study and complete this course, exciting times lie ahead of me.