Kwanele Butana is a coordinator of the Citizen Journalism program of the Grocott's Mail newspaper in Grahamstown, South Africa. The newspaper was founded in the 1870s, and is now operated by the School of Journalism at Rhodes University. The Citizen Journalism program started in September 2009, as part of “The News is Coming” project funded by the Knight News Challenge, and aims to engage local residents to be part of news reporting of their community. After completing a six-week training session conducted by Elvira van Noort, the citizen journalists go out into the community to tell stories important to their daily lives. The majority of the stories appear online in the My Makana section of the Grocott's Mail website (Makana is the name of the municipality in which Grahamstown is located). However, the journalists are given the opportunity for some of their stories and photos to appear in the print version of the newspaper. In this short video, Kwanele explains about this possibility for publication and what it means for the citizen journalists to be a part of this program.
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I wish more newspapers had projects like this.