Grocott’s Mail is an extraordinary newspaper for a number of reasons, one of them being our close working
relationship with the best journalism school in the country.
Grocott’s Mail is an extraordinary newspaper for a number of reasons, one of them being our close working
relationship with the best journalism school in the country.
Readers might know that this newspaper is part of a programme called the David Rabkin Project for Experiential Journalism – which means that Rhodes students use it as a platform to gain experience.
At various times during the year, groups of Journalism students, together with their lecturers, take up residence in the Grocott’s Mail newsroom in order to put into practice the skills they have learned.
This is an unusual arrangement because although this newspaper is owned by a university, it is not a university newspaper.
In other words the target readership of Grocott’s Mail is the entire community within the Makana area and is not limited to Rhodes staff and students.
This peculiar relationship is mutually beneficial for both the students and the local community. Students benefit from the arrangement because they get to practice their skills in a real working environment while the community gains a much wider and more detailed coverage of local events than in any other comparable community.
Most community newspapers in this country have an editorial staff of only two or three people who have to do everything in the business, so they naturally end up relying heavily on press releases for content.
Residents of Makana Municipality on the other hand, can read a newspaper that has (for most of the year at least) enough reporters to cover a wide range of topics, such as, in this particular edition we have articles on Alicedale school protests; Rhodes gay pride week; a community hall in Extension 9, cleaning up for Mandela Day and nutrition in schools.
The list goes on. It is easy to argue that the Makana community enjoys the most thorough coverage of any community in the country.
Sometimes residents criticise our dependence on student journalists saying that because of their inexperience, their articles lack understanding of the real issues at hand.
While this might be a problem in certain cases, it is counterbalanced by the fact that the students have the benefit of working with highly qualified university lecturers.
So if a string of enthusiastic young adults come and ask you all sorts of impertinent questions, have some patience – it’s for a good cause.
