In the last week or so we have had extensive discussions in the newsroom about who should be the Makana Newsmaker of the Year.
In the last week or so we have had extensive discussions in the newsroom about who should be the Makana Newsmaker of the Year.
Time magazine has already announced their choice of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, but we still have a few more days to decide who our most prominent newsmaker was. As discussions progressed, we thought about the Soccer World Cup, the Media Appeals Tribunal and frustrations in City Hall – but it was clear that while these were obviously very big stories, there wasn't a single individual who could be identified as the Newsmaker of the Year.
It was then suggested that, instead of having a Newsmaker of the Year, perhaps we should rather have the Issue or the Event of the Year. The discussion was interesting and quickly ended up in a debate about whether the Soccer World Cup or the drought in our area could really be considered the News Issue of the Year.
It did not take long before there was broad consensus that water, and related issues, constituted the most important thread weaving its way through many editions of Grocott's Mail over the past year and longer. Residents have had to put up with water outages, leaks, burst pipes and dirty water, as well as the persistent drought that has only partially broken.
We have surely written more copy in articles linked to water problems than any other story, and while the drought has been a big part of the problem, the real obstacle has been the municipality's inability to deal with one of the most important service delivery problems in our area. The Eastern Cape provincial authorities even held a Water Indaba in Grahamstown in an effort to work out a plan to resolve the water problems in the area, but to no avail.
There are strategies, plans and loans – but the municipality is still a long way from being able to offer a reliable water supply to the whole town. There are still many households that have gone for months without a regular supply of water, so it is likely that water will continue to be a problem in 2011.
So we have not chosen an issue as the Newsmaker of the Year and we are still narrowing down our choice for a person to be selected for that title. If you have any thoughts on this issue and would like to try and influence our choice, you have until Monday morning to write to us.
