Access to sources and your relationship with your SRC

CaptivateExec · Moderator Joined: 29 Oct 2006 Posts: 21 Location: GHT

Campus politics, just like politics in general is almost always newsworthy. SRC elections are of course as well as the shenanigans of the members of the SRC are also in the public interest, after all, they are public figures.

All this aside though, is it necessary to have a good relationship or at least be on speaking terms with your SRC? Does the SRC on your campus make an effort to use campus media as a means of getting messages to students? or do they find some other way (putting out their own publication etc?). In terms of using the SRC as sources when doing stories on campus issues...are they your first port of call the get an inside perspective or do you just go straight to University Administration and then to the students themselves?

I have to admit that when I was the editor of Activate, the student newspaper at Rhodes University, I had a very good relationship with the president of the SRC and with the SRC as a whole...some would say too good as we hardly ever criticised them. In defense of this it was our policy only to criticise if we saw something bad but also to report on the good things which were done by the SRC and often not seen by the student body.

By following this policy and working with the SRC in communicating with the students (we gave them a page in the newspaper to do that directly) they were always willing to talk to us and give a comment, they helped us get our training program kick started with an injection of cash and were generally nice to us which I have to admit helps a lot.

In short, to what extent is there scope for cooperating with your SRC...or at least striking a balance in your interacting with them? Do they want to interact with you more? To what extent do you think can having an SRC that talks to you will enhance the informational quality of your stories on campus issues? Do you feel that your SRC sometimes works against the flow of information to suppress stories?

Sjoe thats a long post but I feel this is an important issues as the SRC still makes up the campus landscape and ultimately the context in which we work aw student journalists. Idea

_________________
Peter Barlow
Captivate Executive Coordinator 2006/2007
captivater@gmail.com

Anna-Marie · Joined: 10 Nov 2006 Posts: 1 Location: Pretoria

I think it depends on the SRC. When I was News editor of Perdeby, I also had the same relationship with the SRC as you had now. But we had a dynamic SRC then, that actually tried to accomplish some stuff, and when they organised protest marches, etc, it was newsworthy, so we covered it.

But when I became Editor, the SRC went into some constitutional crisis of some sort, resulting in three different presidents in only one year. Different SRC members tried to blackmail or force us into publishing propaganda for them, which we flatly refused, and this turned the relationship sour. Some of the more conservative members accused me of being a "disgrace to Afrikaner culture".

In short: if the SRC accomplishes newsworthy items - by all means cover it. If the student newspaper won't who will? But I can't understand how the SRC on each campus can see the newspaper as their mouth piece. Don't they know anything about a free and objective press?
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Anna-Marie Jansen van Vuuren
Outgoing Editor Perdeby 2005/2006

Uno · Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 7:03 pm Post subject:

The problem is that the SRC has always had a strong influence in the paper.
I feel that all institutions on the campus should be geared towards opening dialogue and giving students a voice. From the most basic of societies, through hostel committees, to the newspaper to the SRC. Some do that on different levels and have more clout than others.
The biggest problem is the space constraints you have in a paper. Online takes that away. With Die Online Matie we'd like to be able to give every student a blog, every society some webspace and cover as much as possible. It's actually also much easier to do than one would think.
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Uno de Waal
Online Editor: Die Matie Studentekoerant

CaptivateExec · Moderator Joined: 29 Oct 2006 Posts: 21 Location: GHT

Here at Rhodes we have RUCUS- the Rhodes University Computer Users Society which offers every member some webspace etc so thats just about covered here at Rhodes...

I don't know about the space constrains either- in my experience, and maybe Rhodes is just a small campus, but space was only a problem with regards to filling it at Activate- not that there was a lack of it etc.

I see your point though, the web does offer almost unlimited space for content etc.
_________________
Peter Barlow
Captivate Executive Coordinator 2006/2007
captivater@gmail.com

Guest · Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2006 12:42 am Post subject:

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