Constitutional Law

Citizen Journalism newroom and NIKA CMS launched in Grahamstown

By Harry Dugmore

During the massive Highway Africa conference, two Knight Foundation funded projects, the Iindaba Ziyafika ('the news is coming') Citizen Journalism newsroom, and the NIKA Content Management System were launched.

The CJ newsroom has 10 computers, the ability to download photos and content from any cellphone (both wireless and through the most amazing collection of cables!) allowing anyone to walk in, write a story, download a photo and get it published on the Grocott's website, or in the twice weekly print edition of Grocott's Mail.

There's a great SoundSlide Show that captures the vibe and import of the launch -- even the Mayor attended and cut a ribbon! (we believe in ceremony and ritual in Grahamstown!)

The CJ newsroom is being used to train ordinary South Africans with computer, cell and journalism skills. About 2,000 people will be trained over 3 years, with the third group of 40 teenagers from local school having just completed a six module, 10 hour course. For many of these students this was their FIRST TIME on a computer and being able to send an sms story (almost everyone has a cellphone) and see it show up on a website was an amazing experience.

Most of these initial learners have had no prior access to computers or even email, and opening up their first email account and getting an email address was a big deal for them. If you can remember the thrill of sending your first email -- do you remember? -- you'll probably recall that something in your head said to you 'this is important and cool' and that's exactly what happened for the young people who completed the first course. They were palpably thrilled to have a Gmail account and to be able to use it!

Check out this little video some Journ students at Rhodes made about this batch of learners -- - the first users of the CJ newsroom -- and what they think about their training and about CJ in general; its amazing to see how such a short course can open up so many possibilities.

Many of these learners will be working on creating school newsletters and some on creating a school 'year book' or annual magazine, which all the well resourced schools in Grahamstown produce, but none of the poorer schools can sport. We're also hoping for more photos from their cell phones, stories and story tips, and we're working on creating a new community radio half hour weekly 'what's up Grahamstown' show, with entirely CJ content, to launch early next year, which trainees will manage.

The launch of NIKA CMS was also very successful, with an online version of what is a very powerful CMS (build on Drupal) and Citizen Journalism through sms and mss platform enabling platform. This is the copy of the invite we sent out to all the attendees at Highway Africa: I'm putting it up as we sent it out, as it covers all of NIKA's new features and explains a bit about our decision to launch first with an on-line version and only supply the stand-alone LAMP based system to newspapers who want it later on:

FOR DELEGATES WHO WORK ON NEWSPAPERS, OR ARE INVOLVED IN MEDIA DEVELOPMENT

At this year's Highway Africa conference we will be running two workshops on
Nika where we will demonstrate how to use the system. Each workshop
participant will be given a CD containing the installation software for the
online version, as well as a user manual and installation guide. The costs
for this are being met by our funder, and the software and documentation
will be made available under a Creative Commons licence.

I'll blog more about NIKA soon, but we've received a lot of great feedback, and we're looking forward to helping both South African and African community newspapers get going with this powerful CMS.

Full post as published by MediaShift Idea Lab on September 24, 2009 (boomark / email).