Moving to the tiny town of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, where I knew absolutely no one from the bustling city of Johannesburg I had called my home for the past 18 years, felt almost impossible.
However, I am now nine months into my four-year degree and I can gladly say I have grown, accomplished and learnt more than I ever thought possible.
One of those lessons is that learning does not only take place in a classroom or a lecture venue.
As part of my degree I was required to job shadow at a newspaper, radio or any form of media organisation.
I was fortunate enough to spend my first attempt at interning at Caxton Local Media, in Boksburg. It was here that I got my first taste of the real journalism experience.
I learnt all about what actually goes into a local newspaper, its production process and all its pressures. Most importantly though, I learnt that a successful newspaper takes a village.
If it wasn’t for the work of the editors, sub-editors, journalists, and the digital, layout, advertising and administration departments, the newspaper would cease to exist. I was previously oblivious to the fact that so many individuals were responsible for the production of a newspaper.
I live in Bedfordview and receive the Bedford/Edenvale News each week, which is also a Caxton newspaper. Now that I know what goes into its production, I will certainly look at my local newspaper through different eyes.
I was also able to see what each department was responsible for. I saw how the sub-editing department spends countless hours sifting through stories and printed out pages, looking for any error or bit of slander.
I saw how the layout department fiddles and moves around the stories and adverts so that each page looks exactly how it should. I saw how the digital department generates and sets up the newspaper’s online content.
I saw how the advertising department hustles on the phones to get adverts sold. I saw how the editors monitor the work of the journalists, update the newspaper’s various social media platforms, check what’s trending, as well as publish their own stories.
My favourite part of the experience was definitely my experience with the journalists from the Advertiser.
I tagged along with journalist Ischke de Jager as she went to gather news from the local police station. I sat and observed how she took notes and listened to all the police captain’s crime reports, warnings and arrest stories.
I had never been to a police station, met a police captain or heard stories about crime first-hand before. It was nerve-wracking but also very exciting.
We then went to the Boksburg SPCA where I got to see all the cats and dogs in desperate need of a home and watched as Ischke photographed some of the animals for the newspaper. We then came back to the offices and I watched as she and the other journalists hurriedly typed up their pieces before deadline. I was constantly in awe of how much one local newspaper had to get done.
Coming to Caxton to job shadow turned out to be much like my Rhodes adventure – frightening and overwhelming at first but educational, exciting and more than worthwhile in the end.
