Last week a Rhodes journalism student asked us how we gather news stories for Grocott’s Mail.
Last week a Rhodes journalism student asked us how we gather news stories for Grocott’s Mail.
She was trying to find out if it was difficult to unearth enough material to fill our two weekly editions. Her question was based on the premise that Grahamstown is a small community, often described as a ‘sleepy hollow’, which would appear not to have enough news and editorial content to keep the paper going.
The short answer to her question is that there is more than enough material to work with because there is always something happening in our community. But the long version is far more prosaic – we don’t always know about everything and even when we do, we don’t always have sufficient resources to cover all the incidents and events taking place in our municipality.
We get our news from a wide range of sources – schools, Rhodes University, the police, the Arts Festival, Scifest and a variety of societies, associations, businesses as well as non-governmental organisations who all send us press releases on a regular basis.
These sources are very useful in that they are important parts of the community using Grocott’s Mail to provide information of interest to the same community.
However, some of the most interesting news stories come from tipoffs brought to our attention directly by members of the community. For example, last Friday’s front page article about the large dagga consignment confiscated by the police was based on a call from one of our community members, Lungi Reed. If she had not contacted our news editor directly, we might never have known about the incident until we heard it on radio.
There have been many other important stories based on what community members have literally brought into our newsroom.
This does not mean that every time someone comes in through the door and claims to have a story that we actually write an article. Sometimes residents come in because they have had a disagreement with a colleague, or they might have had poor service from one of the local businesses. These are not necessarily worthy of stories, but we always welcome members of the community who take the trouble to come in to Grocott’s Mail and speak to us.
