Enkele indrukke oor aspekte van Suid-Afrikaanse joernalistieke opleiding

Abstract

Eleven years ago the South African journalism fraternity got a huge wake-up call following a damning journalism skills audit report in which some serious shortcomings concerning professionalism in newsrooms were   highlighted. Naval-gazing by the majority of the media role players (educators and industry) agreed with most of the findings of the South African National Editors’ Forum’s first skills report published in May 2002 (Sanef 2002a). This was followed by a second audit in 2004 focusing on the state of middle management skills in the same environment with much the same conclusion concerning skills gaps that needed urgent attention (Sanef   2004). In this article answers to the research questions give an overview of some of the impressions of leading South African educators and trainers around an age-old question of what could be the answer to the “correct” way of training newcomers to the profession and what is perceived as the biggest stumbling block in teaching entry-level journalists. This is certainly nothing new, but the answers received are presented and deliberated on against the background of the author’s personal experience as a practising journalist and journalism educator over a period of 40 years. It may be that in certain areas of journalism practice and journalism education opportunities have gone begging and lessons could have been learnt. At the same time acknowledgement should be given for efforts made to counter the sometimes wild and opportunistic claims that the quality of journalism practice and education in South Africa leaves much to be desired.