Students working with Cue Media and those on the Future Journalists Programme ate up a good serving of tips from journalist and publisher Jane Raphaely last Saturday afternoon.
Students working with Cue Media and those on the Future Journalists Programme ate up a good serving of tips from journalist and publisher Jane Raphaely last Saturday afternoon.
Raphaely’s vast knowledge of SA and world media did not fall on deaf ears, with around 40 students listening in rapture to an autobiographical talk centred around reading, books, and the future of print media.
“Books are the things human beings can be the most proud of producing,” Raphaely said, adding that over hundreds of years, literature had liberated the underprivileged.
In an exercise she said she tried to employ when she talked to young people, the founding editor of Fair Lady asked the students to tell her their dreams.
Raphaely confirmed that the future of journalism was one of multi-skilling – writing, design and online media skills, as well as being able to think out of the box.
“However, I do not think online will destroy print,” Raphaely said. “It will just change it.”
For print and online media to provide a coherent offering, she said, journalists needed to have the intellect to balance them.
“And you have to read at least one book every month!” Raphaely added sternly.
“Stories don’t have to be fiction to be good,” she said, adding that most rejection letters in the magazine industry were in reply to articles without a story to tell.
She challenged them to find ideas for stories worth telling; and to be brave and political – “because you are the future of this country; and you don’t even vote!”
Raphaely then spent another hour in one-on-one sessions with eager students.
* Alexander and Makhubela are on the Future Journalism Programme (FJP) at Rhodes University for 2013.
