April 1st Podcast Broadcast- Reflective

My Role in the broadcast was that of Anchor, a position I chose myself. I feel like I did a terrible job especially with the straight read story covering Hieke’s theatre piece. I struggled to pronounce the Afrikaans terms. I don’t think my voice sounds nice. Well I think I need some voice or anchoring training, which I thought would be provided by the lecture. I felt like I was put on the spot and expected to do a great job though I have never anchored in my life before. The short practise session that we did with Danika was just too short and not good enough to prepare one for the anchoring of the Podcast broadcast.

I believe that the other groups anchor Phumi did very well because she had received training from RMR and is their current news reader. This shows the importance of training and coaching is vital.

The stories

1. This might appear and biased and subjective but I believe my story (Youth swamp the polls) was the best of the four. Because election at that time were still a relevant and newsy topic. I think I did well to “localise” the story. Speaking to the local youth about why they voted and what they expected from Government. I think the sound clips were good especially the 1^st one where the two sources give their reasons for voting. Danika was not too happy with my second sound bite… she thought it was too long. That might be so BUT all that was said in that clip was very important, the reason it sounded long is because the guy speaks slowly. I could not have cut anything there.

2. Ross Alford story on crime in Grahamstown was a good story BUT since we constitution we serve the locals and that excludes students. I felt the story was centred around student life and that a person in Joza probably would not care and does not even know African street. The story makes reference to the crime increase as a result of Pirates pizza opening a new restaurant on African street. Again all of that is student related and not necessarily an issue that would concern locals that much especially ones in the townships, which our constitution claims to serve.

3. The water cuts story was quite relevant and well done. The issue affects all locals however I would have liked to hear from a “person from the ground” who is affected by the issue. Sam spoke to official people.

4. Tsego’s straight read story was horrible! For me as the anchor. I felt the story was more like an advert for Hieke than a news piece! I think a lot of information that was unnecessary was put there.

I think we did a good Job and we can improve by selecting more “people on the ground” as sources. Funny enough even though in our agency document we claim to be against objectivity. I believe most of our stories except Tsego’s Hieke play advert, were quite well balanced and not so much subjective. However I feel the podcast would not really appeal to the Grahamstown working community.