Information access is on the move in Africa. Let me paint you a picture. The person is fictitious, but the process isn't.

Patience Ndlovu, a 24-year-old woman living in Soweto, South Africa, sends an SMS to a cell phone number she has scribbled on a scrap of paper.

This time she texts a different number. Seconds later, the response arrives. It's bad news. From this SMS, she learns that she's married.

What Ndlovu is doing is actually quite simple. She knows about identity theft, which is a problem in South Africa, and so she's using an innovative service set up by the government. This service has made a database accessible via SMS. (That's a good thing, because their website, which offers a similar service, was offline at the time of writing!)

Ndlovu is checking to see if she's become a victim after pickpockets stole her identification papers four months earlier. By discovering she's married, Ndlovu realizes that the thieves are using her information.

The man who has technically become her legal husband prefers to work in the shadows. He's an illegal immigrant who needs a reason to avoid deportation. The identity thief is also someone who would agree with the definition of journalism attributed to Lord Northcliffe: "News is what somebody somewhere is trying to suppress."

But the thief's problem now is that ignorance no longer rests on the absence of journalism. Ndlovu can access a much wider flow of information, way beyond the news, using just her cell phone.

Ndlovu's texts to check her status are not about information for its own sake. They are about defending her rights, and about her needing to keep government accountable for combating fraud.

Journalism may have sensitised Ndlovu to her identity rights, but a different information dispensation delivered her the necessary specifics. Her story highlights two points:

• Practical access to information is often a precondition for the effective realization of rights to information.
• Having access to information is also often not even a matter of asserting rights. There's a lot of information that even closed governments are happy to release; it's the dissemination mechanism that often falls short.

Information Access and Rights

This issue of "access" as a wider consideration to "rights" was a subterranean stream at a conference convened in Ghana this week by the Carter Center. The gathering was part of series of events convened by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to promote global transparency.

The limits of taking a narrow citizenship rights-only approach can be seen as follows:

• In Nigeria, it has simply failed. A decade of struggle to persuade politicians to embrace information rights has reached a dead end. Other approaches to secure transparency and disclosure are needed.
• Even in the four (of 54) African countries that have genuine freedom of information laws, the actual uptake and effect has been limited. There's still a persistence of the culture of secrecy, and governments still fear free information.
• In Uganda, despite a right to information law, two journalists recently lost a court case that attempted to compel the government to disclose details on oil exploitation agreements.

So, even where law is a starting point, it's not an end. It can help send out a public signal, but in some cases information can flow even without a law. For example, in Ghana mining companies are increasingly responding to public calls to reveal their contracts with land-holders.

In short, there's a case for arguing that while "access to information" can encompass the "right to information," the issue is a lot bigger than this. This suggests we need to move beyond the "usual suspects," such as the media and pro-transparency NGOs who have an obvious interest in the cause of information freedom. This means spotting who has an interest in giving people practical access.

One option is with the IT and telecommunicartions industries. Generally speaking, these actors have a direct interest in heightening supply and increasing demand for information. They have an interest in getting governments to put data online becasue they can them help connect people to this data. This could help create a culture that values proliferation and pluralism.

Need for Media Literacy

Then again, it's also worth remembering that information availability alone doesn't necessarily translate into knowledgeable societies. Even the rights-rich and information-rich environments of the U.S. and U.K. did not prevent the governments from launching war on the basis of misinformation.

This observation points to the need to even go beyond linking the right to information to the issue of practical access. The point is that there also needs to be attention to media literacy.

As more and more information becomes available through advocacy, legal and cultural reform, and the use of Information and communication technologies, audiences will need to become more info-savvy. That's the next step to further empower the Patience Ndlovu's of the world.

User-generated comments, and text messages in particular, are causing umbrage in Namibian government circles. Their unhappiness highlights the historic shift of media away from unidirectional, univocal information.

This case underlines the politics entailed when the media becomes a platform for broader communication, which is exactly what's happening with mobile phones in some
African countries.

Things came to a head in Namibia in early October at a political rally held as part of the build-up to the country's November elections. A torrent of abuse and threats were issued at the event, and they emanated from the Namibian minister of justice, who also serves as the secretary-general of the ruling Swapo party.

In what amounted to a tirade, Ms. Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana launched a racist attack on the editor of The Namibian, Gwen Lister, and accused this celebrated journalist of personally writing the critical SMS messages that have been published in the paper.

Attacks Target Namibian, User-Generated Content

Significantly, as the Editors' Forum of Namibia (EFN) noted, "it is not the first time politicians have called for an end to the publication of the cell phone-generated SMSes."

EFN went on to defend "the rights of citizens to approach print or electronic news media to offer their opinions on current affairs, matters of state politics and other issues of public debate in the form of letters to the editor, SMS or by direct participation in interactive programs."

An alternative newspaper founded 24 years ago to fight against South African occupation, The Namibian has been fiercely independent and has played a major role in exposing corruption and poor administration in the post-colonial period.

The publication today maintains the most visited website in Namibia, even though the country has very high-cost and low-penetration Internet access. This digital deficit notwithstanding, Namibians at large have seized upon SMS technology to express themselves, and a range of newspapers are jam-packed with their personal adverts and political opinions.

While some publications charge premium rates for SMS messages and make money out of the service, The Namibian provides the same access at cost.

MISA Takes on Information Access

Coincidentally, as the row raged over the minister's remarks, a group of media activists gathered in the capital, Windhoek, to plan a campaign over the next 18 months. They were brought together by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), an influential lobby in the region that has achieved the following milestones:

• This organization was a product of a conference in the city on 3 May 1991, which also gave birth to the "Windhoek Declaration." In turn, that statement secured endorsement by both UNESCO and the United Nations General Assembly, and it is the reason why World Press Freedom Day is commemorated worldwide every anniversary.

• In 2001, MISA convened a follow-up conference, this time concentrating on the need to end state monopolies of the airwaves in Africa. The "African Charter on Broadcasting" that emerged from the event helped to do exactly that.

Now, with "Windhoek +20" looming on 3 May 2011, the focus is being put on information access. The MISA argument is that freedoms without access to information are hollow and inimical to deepening Africa's democratization and clean governance.

This aligns with a long-standing campaign around the world for the right to information. The traditional focus in this area has been on securing sunshine laws which will give members of the public the means to look into the hidden realms of official information. But changing technology requires changes to a paradigm that has historically put exclusive focus on rights to government-held information.

As The Namibian SMS case shows, the issue now has to go beyond this. With public expression enabled through cell phones, access to information needs to embrace society's rights to have citizen-produced content seeing the light of day.

In part, this issue is a question of cost. Although a commercial entity, The Namibian treats SMSes as part of its public service. In contrast, in neighbouring Zambia, the state-owned broadcaster charges premium rates. Labeled "participation at a price" by academic Fackson Banda, this practice is diametrically opposite to real public service media, such as providing toll-free numbers.

What's also critical is that governments keep their hands off of media entities that are publishing user-generated content. It is entirely inappropriate of the Namibian authorities to try and entrench a model of one-way, push media. This model intrinsically facilitates control.

As Lister wrote in March, long before the current controversy, "When people are given public platforms to voice their opinions, such as the call-in shows and the SMS pages in this newspaper, our political leadership soon takes exception when they're exposed to criticism."

In other words, for this particular government information is okay, but communication is taboo.

Registering Journalists and Bloggers in Botswana

What's scary is that in next door Botswana, a draconian law was passed which requires the registration of all media, including bloggers. The system of course could allow for their de-registration and criminalization.

Despite these heavy-handed approaches, the genie of user-generated content is out of the bottle. A totalitarian regime would be required to stop all SMS messaging in order to prevent political criticism, and both Namibia and Botswana count themselves as democracies.

Nevertheless, the Namibian politicians have set out on a problematic path that needs to be countered. MISA and its activists must campaign for information, and also for communication.

Access to information subsumes -- but is much more than -- the right to information.

In turn, this also points toward causes such as defining the remit of public service in new media in a way that does not exclude poorer people who can't afford premium SMS rates. It also emphasizes the importance of advocating for progressive policies which ensure that Internet access is available and affordable to those citizens who want to add their voices to the media mix.

In a column responding to the attacks from the minister of justice, Lister wrote that Namibians "see the SMS pages as an opportunity for dialogue with government and others on matters close to their own hearts."

Her final assessment was that "Our SMS pages are an important voice for civil society, and if in the process their views are not always to the liking of leadership, then it is high time they get used to it."

Another story I've written on The Namibian experience

Most Africans don't have computers or access to the Internet. Cell phones are a different story.

So why aren't journalism schools around the continent integrating the use of mobile devices fully and squarely into their courses? It's a question that could also apply in many other places -- even in places with access to computers and the Internet.

Answers to this challenge were provided in Grahamstown, South Africa last week, when MobileActive's Katrin Verclas, a Knight grantee, ran a workshop with a selection of African journalism teachers at Rhodes University.

Participants were brought together under the auspices of another Knight project, the Knight Center for International Media at the University of Miami. Veteran multimedia teacher Rich Beckman put together five days of high-powered training for a handpicked group from countries as diverse as Sierra Leone, Kenya, Senegal and South Africa.

The group learned about audio-driven slide shows by MSNBC's Jim Seida, and online video storytelling by the University of Westminster's David Dunkley Gyimah. Debate around digital ethics was led by Sam Terril from the University of Miami.

But it was the session with Verclas that brought home the obviousness of why there should be a strong focus on mobile in African journalism schools. Take Muda Ganiyu, head of the Lagos Polytechnic, who told colleagues that he had seven video cameras for 1,200 students. Video-enabled cell phones, he pointed out, could fill a rather large gap.

He proved this point when he and colleague George Nyabuga used a cell phone to capture dramatic images and video of a shack being set on fire and the arrest of the alleged arsonist -- all while out on a workshop exercise.

Second-Rate Technology

"What about the problem that cell phones don't usually have as high end capabilities as specialized video cameras?" asked Verclas.

She then answered her own question: "Having second-rate technology to tell a story is better than no technology at all."

More than that, participant Harold Gess argued that journalism teachers need to focus on storytelling; the technology is secondary to this task. So, if a cell phone can enable students to learn to tell stories effectively, that amounts to mission accomplished.

Ayesha Ismail, another participant, added that the value of teaching students to use the power of their phones is that they can then do reporting at any time, and not be constrained to times when they booked out a school's scarce equipment.

That point brought home the importance of students learning to use -- to the fullest extent possible -- their own phones.

Highlighting the value of capitalizing on having a communications tool in your pocket, Verclas herself snapped pictures on her cell phone of a smashed window at the local newspaper, Grocott's Mail. Overnight, thieves had stolen a TV set located in the window bay that had been part of the Knight-supported Citizen Newsroom, launched the previous week during the Highway Africa conference in the city.

Newsroom co-ordinator Michael Salzwedel and editor Steven Lang had also grabbed a picture on their cell phones with the aim of posting it online and generating community discussion around the crime.

Reporting by SMS

Back in Verclas' class, another participant, Brian Garman, proposed that classes on mobile journalism should start with the most basic of a phone's capabilities by teaching the principles of reporting via SMS. Courses could then move to images, audio, video and multimedia packages done on -- and sometimes for -- cell phones.

Garman also argued that when students have access to higher-end equipment, they tend to replicate familiar genres and formats. Conversely, if they are required to experiment with the new medium of mobile, there's a greater chance that they could drive change.

This point put the participants at the workshop into temporary pause mode, the reason being that using cell phones for journalism is as new to them as it is to students.

As realization of the possibilities set in, it was almost as if the room became energized with light bulbs flashing, brainwaves churning, and spirits soaring.

In assorted projects for Verclas during the day, the group came to grips with practical production using cell phones. They came up with pretty creative content, such as a documentary made in French using cell phones, as well as the shack fire story.

Innovative Use of Cell Phones

The groups also cooked up clever schemes for using cell phones in innovative ways. One idea was to sign up people during the 2010 World Football Cup in South Africa and, using a signal sent via text message, trigger an avalanche of user-generated photos of what was happening at that given moment in time.

Another proposal was for software tools that would enable an entire audio slideshow to be edited, compiled and compressed for upload on a cell phone. A third idea planned to enlist carriers to load phones with social mobilization images and audio, which would kick in to users when calls were made or received.

It wasn't all blue skies, however. Verclas highlighted the importance of context in that powerful cellular carriers can determine what lives or dies on their network. Along with that, metadata about locality can be abused, prices are insufficiently regulated in some countries, and privacy can never be guaranteed.

There's no problem in acknowledging the downside. Journalism teachers need to convey the negative aspects to students as well as the positive potential.

And thanks to the workshop, they know they can do both.

Of course, not everyone sees J-schools as reflective entities. For years, editors worldwide have complained that the schools don't in fact reflect the mainstream media enough. J-teachers are blamed for a shoddy supply of new cogs to the newsroom machines.

The industry's assumption has been that it knows exactly what's needed; that it's the J-schools that need changing. Educational institutions, in this view, should be service providers to the status quo, generating graduates who can do "the job."

In a nutshell, this perspective condemns J-schools as generally lagging behind; as falling short of what they are "supposed" to be doing. It's a model of J-education "manqué."

The other side of the coin is avant-garde J-teachers who regard the industry as endemically conservative, and whose innovative work qualifies graduates with a mindset that's out of synch with restrictive newsroom practice.

For industry, this is a model of J-teachers as irritants rather than disappointments. From the J-educator side, however, it's the industry that's the problem and in need of change.

These two polarized perspectives -- J-schools behind, or J-educators too far ahead -- do reflect some realities. But their appeal can conceal the systemic situation. This is that J-education has generally correlated, more-or-less, industry patterns in regard to a manifesting both a predominant conservatism and fragmentary pockets of innovation.

Two Education Conferences

So it was that two recent conventions about university-based programs exhibited this "mirror" status -- of mimicking the trends in broader society. In Boston, the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) consisted of those teachers resisting change (most delegates) and those embracing it (a minority). A sizeable constituency felt that "journalism is in major upheaval and journalism educators don't know exactly what to do about that."

In Accra, the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE) revived itself after ten years of inaction to draw its constituency into an academic conference. Here the mix was between the bulk of delegates interested in development communications, and a fringe focused on mass media and journalism.

Only a handful of AEJMC participants blogged and twittered their conference, and packed out appropriate sessions that generally squeezed into small venues. Yet, the predominant refrain at the event seemed to be one of J-teachers clinging to vanishing models and urging "back to basics." This despite the prize-winning entry to a conference competition by Jane Singer about the need for new kinds of graduates.

For example, titters of approval arose in response to one speaker criticizing the shortness of Twitter (140 characters). A lone voice (backed online by a few Twitter fans using the tag #aejmc) had to point out that the truncated format is an advantage for skimming, and that posts often include links to content of greater depth.

Impressionistically, the overall balance of views at AEJMC seemed to be widespread reluctance regarding change -- thereby echoing what seems to be the situation in the media industry. There was much nostalgia for the old certainties, and a display of defensive fears of the unknown future.

Alfred Hermida had the same sense, following the conference via the limited blogging. My own experience was that excitement at change was in short supply.

Former Washington Post multimedia editor Tom Kennedy earnestly urged AEJMC teachers to become change agents, but his appeal seemed puny against the inertia of two similarly cumbersome institutions: big media, and university academia. For now, the revolutionaries appear to be pretty marginal.

Barely Touching on New Media

In Accra, the ACCE barely touched on new media. Although there were a few research papers on Information and Communication Technologies, these mainly focused on the significance of these for health care and development purposes, rather than for journalism.

The dominant thrust at ACCE was that communications in Africa is much wider than journalism and the mass media, and that priority goes to word-of-mouth communications, culture and community radio. Only a minority of research papers dealt with mass media, journalism and democracy.

The bulk of participants also seemed to have little inkling about how cell phones are game changers for so much social life in Africa -- not least media and journalism. In all this, the ACCE event also seemed to duplicate much of the communications and media environment in Africa.

In summary, two conferences -- despite being continents apart -- both seemed to miss making a mark in terms of changing journalism education. That may not be very surprising, but it also doesn't have to be this way.

Fortunately, at both events, some attention was given to the forthcoming 2nd World Congress on Journalism Education (WJEC-2), scheduled for South Africa, 5-7 July, 2010. The theme of that gathering, based on a suggestion by this writer, is: "Journalism education in an age of radical change."

The character of this occasion will be a chance to focus energies on going beyond the nature of J-schools as we know them.

Experience of difference is a great stimulus for change -- in part, because looking at others helps you to see yourself in different ways. So, by mashing up a myriad of international experiences at WJEC-2, there's a prospect for imaginations to really break free, en masse.

Anyone out there agree that journalism education needs re-booting?

Postscript: Suzanne Yada (below) directed me to her blog and some good links too:

Her post: "Throwing social media in J-school curriculum isn't enough"

* Mark Hamilton's "Remaking Journalism Education: Some Thoughts"

* Vin Crosbie's "Anatomy of a 21st Century Media Executive" (Plus Joey Baker's Publish2 links.)

* Greg Lynch's posts on "Wanted: Resident Butt-Kicker (Thoughts on journalism education)" and "Rich Beckman discusses how to reshape journalism education"

The same proposal has been roundly condemned by people whose knee-jerk reaction is that government money means government control. For this camp, government control engenders the oxymoron of "government journalism." Ergo, a bailout is not a solution for saving an industry that's central to democracy because its independence allows it to question government.

Fear of government money for media is not universal. Many democracies, notably in the Francophone world, have long-standing traditions of public funds for the press, without compromising editorial independence. Sweden subsidizes second papers in small towns so as to preserve a degree of pluralism. Scores of democracies have fine public broadcasters that receive parts of their budget by way of the state. Even the US hasn't been entirely hostile to publicly funded journalism -- as shown by entities like PBS and NPR.

A further point is that an American tradition of keeping state and media finances separate ought not to be seen as ossified and frozen in time. Cultural change happens, period.

So, moving beyond emotional reaction and self-imposed limitations on what's possible, there's a need to look more closely at what it means to have the government giving funds to the press. (For a look at various proposals to change U.S. laws to help newspaper companies, check out this story by Jeffrey Neuburger at MediaShift.)

Political Influence

In the U.S., the concern seems to be mainly about the blurring of boundaries between political power and the private economics of providing public information. The worry is about opening a channel for political power to influence a realm that has historically treasured its independence of the state.

Some might say, with cause, that much of this independence is more myth than reality. In their analysis, the press has generally been uncritically aligned with the two-party political duopoly and with the spin of corporations whose lobby strength anyway determines governmental policy and practice.

Yet even if newspapers to an extent have been in cahoots with established power, that's not been a formally imposed requirement of their institutional make-up. So, it's not a small matter to worry whether government money would turn out to be a government leash on relatively independent watchdogs.

This concern is why a number of commentators have proposed forms of government aid that stop short of direct cash injections. These range from tax breaks and postal subsidies to guarantees of state advertising.

Governments can play tangential (and impartial) roles that can benefit the newspaper industry at large. But while everything helps, there is still the key question of funding. So, how dangerous is it really, and can systems be designed to avoid political control coming with cash?

South African Case Study

The case of South Africa's public broadcaster is salutary in this regard. When the country won democracy in 1994, it needed to transform a noxious governmental mouthpiece into an impartial and independent public broadcaster.

To that end, the power to appoint members to the board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was put into the hands of parliament and a charter setting out political independence was enshrined in legislation. Although the institution was later corporatized, with the state as sole shareholder as represented by the Minister of Communications, its board still reported mainly to Parliament and to a constitutionally independent regulator.

Some small sums of taxpayers' funds went into SABC over the years, but the bulk of its budget was met through advertising. In consequence, rather than meeting the lofty criteria of public service broadcasting, much of its programming output was indistinguishable from commercial broadcasting -- but the institution at least was not a government mouthpiece.

Two years ago, this model began to unravel when the ruling African National Congress (ANC) asserted political control over what it saw as a potential government apparatus. As the dominant party, it was able to railroad its choice of board members through parliament. The Minister of Communications also assumed the power of final say (as shareholder representative) over the top executive appointments at SABC.

But then the ANC fractured. And so too did the SABC, with different elements within the agency supporting different factions. In short, a previously politically independent institution fell prey to utter politicization. In the resulting infighting, what had been a viable commercial enterprise was mismanaged into near bankruptcy. The result today is pressure on the South African government to bail out the SABC to the tune of almost $300 million.

The moral of this story is multi-fold:

> Despite best intentions, it is pretty hard to design a politically fire-proof system.

> Furthermore, it was the fact of state ownership -- not governmental funding as such -- that allowed for political interference.

> The likelihood of a bailout could further reduce autonomy at the broadcaster, because any institution receiving taxpayer money needs to account closely to the representatives of the payers.

That's not to say that the government will use this new relationship for political purposes, but it's also not to say that it won't. The bigger point is that there is no structural counter-balance which could check and limit its potential to do so.

Bringing in Accountability

What could make a difference in South Africa would be to institutionalize an accountability system that includes public constituencies over and above the political ones of the minister and parliament.

This could be by restructuring the board to follow the European practice of constituencies -- like labor, churches, universities, cultural groupings, etc. -- directly electing representatives separately from the politicians. It could also be through setting up standing fora for citizens in general.

Overall, the potential of SABC to survive as an independent public broadcaster will be a function of the civic culture of South Africa. Fortunately, there are numerous and vocal civil voices who increasingly form an alternative pole of influence to political power.

How is all this significant to the matter of public funds, administered by government, going to newspapers in the U.S.?

It goes without saying that any such injections ought not to reward managers who failed to reinvent newspapering nor to benefit external shareholders who condoned bad business decisions like over-leveraging and huge debt ratios.

Neither should there be support for particular papers at the expense of damaging competitors who do not qualify for aid. It is also self-evident that any state funding should be conditional on attempts to create a new business models, rather than shoring up one that no longer works.

But there's also the question of how potential recipients would account for their use of public funds, which returns us to the thorny issue of political pipers calling the tune.

If South Africa's experience is anything to go by, then the answer lies in civil society coming to the fore. The U.S. has a fine tradition of citizen participation, and the consequential slogan should be: "No bailouts without direct representation in governance."

If the price of a newspaper getting taxpayer money is opening up newspaper governance to some form of external accountability, then let this be to more than just government.

Editorial independence in this model may be more constrained as compared to previously. But at the very least there would still be newspapers around to practice journalism -- and a journalism that is not tainted by exclusive governmental power.

By becoming accountable to broader society, some newspapers might also benefit in ways other than just keeping politicians off their backs. They could rediscover public and civic journalism as values in their own right -- as well as recognize the community as an important component of inventing themselves anew. The result could be the enrichment of newspaper journalism as a sustainable pillar of democracy.

They don't want your pity. They're seeking your respect -- and your helpful answers to some of their questions about the future.

Journalists under siege

For sure, professional reporters are not saints deserving of hero-worship. But they don't deserve to be dubbed a closed priesthood interested only in preaching to the masses and keeping lay-people out of the profession. That's an unfair and highly caricatured criticism.

The point is that, even despite the many sins of the profession, journalists have sustained a form of public communication crucial for a level of democracy in countless countries -- and the underlying industry still has a long run for underpinning this in the developing world.

For too many journalists around the world today, the biggest threats are still governments, soldiers and crooks (sometimes one and the same entity). But everyone also knows that increasing numbers of journalists are also threatened by changes in media economics -- especially in the press in developed countries.

It should be of universal concern that the extant business model of newspapers is declining so fast in some places and is far from future-proofed in other countries. If there's no newspaper industry ahead, from where is society's journalism (warts 'n all) supposed to come?

Reports of Journalism's death greatly exaggerated

To the extent that people point to broadcast journalism, or to publicly subsidized media, it's correct to say that a demise of newspapering is not equivalent to the end of journalism.

"A world without birds" was the subtext of the avian flu panic; "a world without journalism" is a similar hype right now.

On the other hand, it is definitely the case that without newspaper companies, there's the serious prospect of a global shrinkage in journalism -- and that's a loss that can't be made up for by all the world's citizen bloggers, NGOs and live-streamed coverage of municipal meetings, etc. (as valuable as these are).

Despite this truth, wherever there are online articles (emanating from journalism) about the troubles in the newspaper industry, there are also too often also worrying comments bidding good riddance to the press. Never mind that the platform for expressing these views often wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the money made, ultimately, from institutions built upon professional journalism.

Fortunately, notwithstanding all the changes in journalism, the people with stakes in newspapers are not going to roll over and die. Nor, contrary to some claims, does their newfound zeal for experimenting with paid content models amount to a collective suicide pact.

Instead, there's a lot of idealism that's actively committing energy to keeping media-based journalism thriving.

Standing up for newspapers

There are also the directly vested interests of those who own, operate and work for media houses. And amongst these, a critical set of interests concerns those of the journalists themselves, and their representative organizations -- their trade unions.

This is a constituency that's fighting back -- not, generally, to hold onto the past, but to ensure that their voices will help shape the future of journalism.

And they want your views to help them do so. To this end, the International Federation of Journalists has this week posted some 25 questions on their website. These emanate from a group that's developing a report on the "future of journalism" for the organization's 2010 congress.

Far from a siege mentality, journalists under economic threat today are showing an openness to ideas -- and to collaborations with bloggers, foundations and general well-wishers.

Perhaps the pundits, managers, consultants -- and critics -- could pause a moment to respond to this approach from those working at the coalface.

Guy Berger is co-chair of the IFJ's "Future Group" think tank, a group of ten journalism union leaders and academics from Canada, the UK, Australia, Brazil, Spain and Indonesia.

In a publication titled Values. Culture.Content, he addressed the question, "How do you differentiate your product from the growing number of media and information options?"

Observing that "newspapers are place-based media," he went on to note that the standard answer was that newspapers should "become the primary source of local news." Rebutting this, Smith declared that "a better answer would be to maximize relevance to customers and the marketplace." That in turn meant a newspaper should have a reader orientation based on "the enduring values of journalism" as well as "the civic values of the newspaper company."

So far, so good. Not just good, but excellent. Despite the hype, local per se is not necessarily alluring. It certainly does not automatically resonate with a values-based approach.

Consumers Are Kin

But from here, Smith enters some slippery terrain. In short, he proposes that stories should correlate to the values of readers. That sounds deadly boring to me. It's a recipe for a paper to forego any identity of its own, instead just reflecting what the readers already know and want to hear.

From a business point of view, it's as conservative as anything. There's the dangerous assumption that readers have shared values. Worse, the assumption is that newspapers exist to serve tastes based on these values. "Understanding the needs of readers," as Smith says. (Although to be fair to him, I'm caricaturing his emphasis somewhat for the sake of correcting the balance!)

Perhaps it's heresy to say this, but arguing that the consumers are king is actually a recipe for the death for journalism.

A better formulation is "consumers are kin" -- and, as everyone knows, not everything goes smoothly between blood-relatives.

The mantra for the past decade at least has been: follow the market. Nope. Ask most journalists -- did they get into the business as a substitute for becoming a masseuse? No, their motivation was to make a difference and to raise awareness of needs, not merely to meet pre-defined needs.

Where following the market does make sense is seeing where the market is -- and having a presence on online social networks, offering widgets and badges, etc. But that doesn't mean kowtowing to the market.

Of course, most newspapers are businesses so some would say they have to follow the market -- but they're the kind of business whose success depends on leading rather than following. A good newspaper helps to shape the market. The audiences for media outlets are continuously constructed and reconstructed.

A good newspaper therefore stimulates new interests instead of just tailing existing ones. Its voice (as evidenced through its selection and approach to news) is what sets it apart.

News Linked to Identity

This is not to say that people buy papers for their attitude. They want news -- but news that is positioned and linked to an identity. And this is an identity that, while recognizing readers, does not try to posture as them. Newspapers aren't about narcissism. On the contrary, it's the difference between the reader and the paper that makes the difference between a successful paper and a dying one.

When a paper has fresh information and a perspective that the reader doesn't, that's all the more reason for a connection. Naturally, since Smith wrote his recommendations, tech has travelled a distance, meaning that the connection can now go both ways: a dialogue becomes possible.

But a newspaper should never be just a platform for citizens to dialogue with each other. That would be to relinquish being a player in the game. It's not a question of journalists being arrogant or aloof, but of being true to the nature of the newspaper qua institution.
This prescription for the ailing industry doesn't mean that a paper should adopt a single voice, nor a hectoring one. It means, simply, taking up positions in terms of the news mix and the comments thereon, and offering to engage people with this package.

In this way, a newspaper serves the public imagination. It puts onto the public agenda various conceptions and notions about community, locality, nationality, etc. If we're talking about a value-based approach to newspapers, this is surely where it's at.
That's strategic, without being manipulative

Switch-over in the sense of convergence is the challenge facing South African community paper Grocott's Mail. The publication is at the heart of a Knight Foundation project to exploit new technologies in order to build a participative public sphere within a small town.

The paper serves a town that's divided spatially, linguistically, racially, and along class lines. There are also divisions between youth and adults, and between town and gown (Rhodes University is the biggest institution in this college town of circa 100 000 people).

The only other local medium of significance is a community radio station (mainly in the isiXhosa language) which hosts important discussions but lacks journalistic capacity.

Grocott's was founded by white settlers in 1870, but today tries to serve the broader community of Grahamstown. But that endeavour is constrained by language (it's in English), its cover price, literacy levels and the difficulty of addressing all interests and views in the confines (and costs) of printed pages.

We won a Knight Challenge grant to address this very challenge, and our key strategy is leap-frogging the paper into mobile communications.

Young, poor or semi-literate residents tend at least to have access to cell phones, meaning that they can receive calls and messages even if they don't always have the airtime to initiate them. One analyst at South Africa's biggest cell phone company reckons there are 8 million South Africans online via their mobiles -- double the number who have access via desktop computer.

So here's what we're doing:

• Last year, we experimented successfully with 40 learners from local high schools, who produced wonderful SMS journalism contributions to the paper. These workshops will continue and be expanded this year.

• Right now, we're working on a Citizen Newsroom which will provide a practical hub with facilities and training to enable a swath of residents to contribute electronically to the paper -- for instance by downloading photos taken with their phones.

• Soon we'll be interviewing for a new media editor for the paper, who will help oversee its digital expansion.

But all this also requires transformation of the paper into a multi-platform enterprise.

Grocott's has had a website for a couple of years -- maintained (erratically) by new media journalism students at the local Rhodes University (which owns the paper).

The site has played a little with a mobile interface in the past, but what's been lacking to date is an over-arching digital strategy that would provide the technical, conceptual and business basis to integrate marginalized people into the mainstream communications around the paper's journalism.

For this reason, we more-or-less had to start thinking about convergence at Grocott's from scratch. To this end, the paper had a strategy workshop a fortnight back.

I searched the web unsuccessfully for something like a checklist of steps for how a paper could coherently approach the exploitation of digital platforms. Especially for small independent papers, there doesn't seem to be much codified experience out there.

We're talking about the steps to develop optimum synergies between a twice-weekly publication with channels like SMS, a conventional website and a .mobi site.

Drawing from people like David Domingo et al, it was helpful to start the workshop by discerning five areas of convergence:
- Marketing (cross promotion and advertising issues)
- Skills (technical and genre)
- Production process (repurposing, pre-purposing, collaboration, integrated newsplanning)
- Delivery platforms (the range of web technologies, audio and video, SMS, MMS)
- Audience (devices, customisation, interactivity, etc).

That's a vast panoply. But we agreed that convergence doesn't mean conflating all operations, nor that full-on integration is some kind of Holy Grail. We wanted to avoid the kind of teleology that is indirectly suggested by the Convergence Continuum model.

Instead, our focus by necessity has to be driven not by theory, but on the basis of our small paper's current limited resources, skill, culture and revenue models.

And, rather than be driven by tech and hype, we located the discussion in terms of expanding the existing vision and mission of the paper. The result:

Vision: A viable and high-quality convergence-driven community newspaper (and multi-platform interactive publisher) that serves and grows the local & remote community of Grahamstown as well as (some of) the multiple training interests of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University.

It's my non-geek experience of work for a community newspaper that aims to produce world-class code for community papers that is singing-dancing, super-portable and open-source.

The history started in the buzz around the World Summit on Information Society which helped to move OSS into the mental horizon of non-techies like me.

When the Rhodes journalism school where I work acquired Grocott's Mail, the local newspaper in 2004, we had to install a load of new PCs to accommodate students who would now be learning the craft in situ.

We saved $100 a PC by installing Open Office, rather than Microsoft. It added up to significant economy in a cash-poor context. But the first two years were handicapped by a network that used desktop folders for copy flow and archiving. In separate studies, a colleague Brian Garman (see relevant chapter) and an MA student Habtamu Dogu noted it was a real mess.

But creeping up alongside the chaos of no version control and unintended triple sub-editing of identical stories, serious research was taking place into Content Management Systems in African newsrooms. This fact-finding, led by me, and carried out by 10 MA students, was published as What the newsroom knows. It was funded by the FreeVoice foundation, and the study identified a huge gap in cheap, efficient systems that would suit small-scale publications.

My colleague at the time Vincent Maher (now with Vodacom) set about building such a system. With support from Dutch foundation Niza, a prototype was hatched and trialed for the Cue newspaper which students produce during the annual arts festival. The media content was dubbed xanni:

It was a wow. Visiting editors from even large papers were dazzled at the functionality. One of these was a time tracker - the CMS delivered graphics showing if the paper was going to run late because of slow copy flow, and statistics on reporters regularly missing their deadlines:

But there were hitches. The system had some bugs, was not fully OSS, and some users complained about having the wordprocessing functions and clumsy cut-and-paste components. The automated web-publishing side shovelled content online which really needed human intervention.

There was work to be done. Christened "Nika", the isiXhosa verb "to give", we began further work on a new version. First stop was the work flow system. Then we would work on the web side, and in mobile thereafter.

Later, these other two components were dubbed "Thatha" (meaning, "to take" - i.e. from the workflow onto the web), and "Thumela" ("to send").

The vision was a generic suite that would be a CMS in a box, available free to small newspapers all over Africa. Grocott's Mail would be a test bed.

So far, so good. I even understood some the many dimensions of a CMS in the expanded sense, and gave nowtonext.doc on it in Kampala in 2008. Things looked excellent when we won a Knight Challenge which would cover the costs of a state-of-the-art package that would include incredible integration with mobile. Our project was called Iindaba Ziyafika - the news is coming.

But more learning was to take place. Not about sexy software, but about the complex people and processes who create it. Because from the first iteration in 2005 up till mid-2008, little progress was recorded. The development process seemed never-ending.

This is what I found:

• Geeky people can get bored very quickly. They don't like to redo systems just to make them OS compliant.
• When you work with informal developers, you run the risk of having your server stolen (yes it happened!) and no back up available. This killed our 2nd version which was used to produce a follow-up to the xanni multiple-media site.
• A generic system (the idea of the "general" that can be applied to the "particular") is less viable than a customised one (which could move from one "particular" version - which can then be re-particularised by others with a bit of tweaking).
• Trying to get the full Monty coding for a single big bang product does not work.

Enter Rhodes computing professor, Peter Wentworth, who came on board in 2008 to help us. He advocates iterative development. You do a bit, then implement, revise if need be; add a bit, implement; ad infinitum.

That's exactly what he did - working slowly, but consistently, with Grocott's. The result, the Nika workflow system finally got on the road in mid-2008. Documentation about this is available at: http://netserv.ict.ru.ac.za/tracs/nikatrac

It looked like this:

The lesson after all that time is: don't try to build the perfect mega-system, because it likely will never happen. With tons of specs (and in a changing environment!), you are creating an infinite task where developers just keep adding and adding ... and meanwhile you as client grow long in the teeth waiting for the product.

Instead, you get results by getting something small going, which you keep modifying and adding to.

Another advantage of the trickle-based model (ironically called Extreme Programming I am told!), is that it gives time for the users to absorb and implement. This is something that Dutch academic Peter Verweij wrote about regarding our work.

Even then, you can risk going too fast. An interface between Nika and Gallery software for photographs is still to be properly taken up by the busy people at the Grocott's Mail. As a result, the picture archiving on the newspaper lags behind the funky Nika workflow.

Whether the paper actually goes for an integration of Scribus for page layout, is unclear. It might just make sense to keep on using Adobe InDesign as a proprietary software stand-alone next to Nika. (There is some discussion on articulation here at the Drupal site.)

Along with punting the iterative approach, Wentworth is an evangelist for development-by-story-telling. (Funny thing that - I thought journalists had a monopoly here!) According to this, you tell a programmer an anecdotal story about "what will happen when", and the magician then conjures up the code to supply the "how".

There's another lesson Wentworth taught me too. Somewhat romantically, I had hoped that the drupal.org site with its many plug-ins would be of value. Why reinvent what global geeks have contributed to general knowledge stock? But the good prof reported that several of the relevant plug-ins on the site appeared to have either been abandoned, not been upgraded to Drupal 6, or were still in intermediate stages. The result was that we turned to Kannel for part of the mobile development.

A lot still remains to be done. We now have Thumela (in basic version) talking to Nika, meaning that we have software (two-way SMS) that integrates with workflow.

The Thatha system (the web component being completed by student Dale Tristram with support from Wentworth) is finally near implementation (est.launch April).

It should articulate nicely with its two sister dimensions. There are interesting lessons here in relation to developing Grocott's digital strategy more broadly - that's the subject of a future post!

From April, the vision is to take forward all three interacting legs (Nika, Thatha, Thumela) into holding hands with new Grocott's realms - like a .mobi site and various downloadable applications for cellphones.

Come this September's 13th Highway Africa conference, serving African journalists who get excited about ICT, there should be some great software to show off ... and give out.

This is an early manifestation of the Knight Challenge project titled Iindaba Ziyafika, which aims to use cellphone technology to deepen a local public sphere in which Grocott's Mail is the primary place for a meeting of minds and formulation of public opinion.

It's not just age differences being spanned, but a legacy of apartheid that includes divides of language, class and space.

The content doing the trick has been generated by 45 young adults from three schools, working with Schools Officer Sipho January, and it was based on three kinds of SMS citizen journalism:

- Comment/opinion
- Mini-news story
- Haiku poetry (you read it right: don't conflate journalism content with conventional formats!).

In sum, they produced:

• strong opinions on municipal accountability and reflected controversy around the revival of the local community radio station.

• mini-news stories about crime, sewer pipe breakages ... and sex in the city of Grahamstown. Here's an example:

"Friday afternoon pupils were caught doing sexual activities in public, [at] Ethembeni ext7. They were kissing each others' private parts, [and] also taking their clothes off. They were beaten by the community, but didn't get reported to the cops."
(sub-text: Vigilante behaviour is a real problem in Grahamstown.)

Haiku Journalism

The Haiku poetry SMSes from the learners covered stories like: "On my way home. Knives, 'Give me your phone'. Took, ran away."

And more light-heartedly: "My classmate busy as a bee. Braids on Thursday; plaited on Friday. How's that possible?"

Is that journalism? It's a debate that emerged when I reported the project at the Global Forum for Media Development in December. You can read the debate here, along with other samples of what they wrote(unexpurgated). (The content published in the paper was edited).

One thing for sure: When these young citizen journalists spoke about their experience at the Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown in September, they said they enjoyed doing haiku journalism the most.

At Highway Africa, which is attended by some 700 media practitioners from all over Africa, someone asked the learners if they ought not to write in conventional language, not SMS-speak. "No ways," came the answer. "The adults should get with it."

I also presented on the project at the MobileActive conference in Johannesburg in October. At every occasion, people have come up to me afterwards (eg. from South Africa, the UK and Afghanistan) saying they've been inspired to do something similar.

My advice:
• 1. Work with youth who feel marginalized from mainstream media, and are motivated to express themselves.
• 2. Get a media partner who will publish or broadcast their work. They -- and their parents -- get a huge kick out of seeing their stories in the public realm.
• 3. Train the youth about what it means to be citizens (rights and responsibilities), and what it means to be journalists (accuracy, verification, fairness, public interest). We've done a basic booklet [PDF file].
• 4. Signal to audiences that the content does not come with a professional stamp of approval, and be sure to double-check anything that seems dicey or merits deeper investigation.

The ball is rolling and some of the bigger issues include assessing how this expanded circuit of news relates to the quality of the public sphere in Grahamstown. Keep in mind that this is a town which cannot even agree on its name (a strong lobby wants to rename it iRhini).

Challenges Ahead

For 2009, the challenge is to see how these youth contributions can be sustained, and also how to integrate continuous publication of these in the general mix of the paper.

We're also planning research into youth creators themselves and into audience reception of their content. Right now, our Schools Outreach officer Sipho January is collecting detailed data on the technology -- what phones they have been using, and how they manage use with pre-payment.

There's also tech development being done to develop the software interface between the telephony and Grocott's Mail drupal-based CMS. It's been a slow process, but there'll be some stuff to test in January.

The biggest aim for 2009 is not only to receive youth journalism, but to deliver mobile news streams to the producers as well. After all, to be a quality media producer, you have to be a hot-shot media consumer.

What's more, the content is constrained by being 140 characters long - sms is the method of communications for now. Over the course of 8 workshops, 80 learners in their penultimate school year will be trained about optimum Cit-journ in this way ... all over two months.

The workshops, to be run by university journalism students and co-ordinated by colleage Sipho January, will cover the skills of contributing opinions, news and poems by SMS. Grocott's Mail newspaper will receive and publish the best - bringing youth news direct to the older audience who read the paper.

It's courtesy our of Knight Challenge grant.

Still to be decided: can the learners write in sms-speak (abbreviations), and the paper unzip these into full language; can they publish in their mother tongue (isiXhosa), when the paper appears in English?

I wrote about recently about the state of the project in my Mail & Guardian column.

Surveying ten or so folks shows that top of the list is Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine. It's followed closely by Amy Gahran's E-Media Tidbits and Jay Rosen's Pressthink.

Dan Gilmor, Romanesko and Mark Glaser's MediaShift are also popular online destinations.

Also mentioned were:
Paidcontent.org
ReadWriteWeb
Dave Winer's Scripting News
Doc Searles
Steve Outing
JD Lasica's Social Media
Online Journalism Review
Cyberjournalist.net
Dave Weinberger's Joho
Mindy McAdams
Ethan Zuckerman
Memeorandum
Fred Wilson
Ryan Sholin Invisible Inkling
Charlie Beckett
Henry Jenkins Aca-fan
Convergence Culture Consortium (at MIT)
Danah Boyd
Talkingpoints
Terry Heaton
Grant McCracken

At present in South Africa, at least six out of ten adults have access to cellphones, but their main use is for interpersonal conversation. The notion that these are devices that can also be used to receive, and contribute to, journalism is not well-developed beyond sms comments sent to the mass media.

What could begin to change this culture is free-to-air television directed to handhelds. At present, cellphone users with 3G services can receive video programmes - but these work only on advanced handsets, cost the consumer extra subscription money and are subject to network congestion. However, South Africa in November is supposed to commence digital terrestrial broadcasting - including free-to-air services on DVB-H to handheld devices.

Not many cellphones are equipped so far to receive such signals, but it's a case of the dialectic between chickens and eggs. Many entry-level phones today have built-in cameras as standard; likewise many tomorrow will have chips to receive digital broadcasts. Especially in the build-up to the 2010 World Soccer cup being hosted in South Africa, many locals will seek phone upgrades that can let them tune into clips of key moments.

But, sad to say, the government's policy framework for digital migration in South Africa is badly delayed. So I'm sceptical that November will inaugurate momentum towards the public coming to see cellphones as more than just glorified walkie-talkies. It would have made our project easier to work with the grain, but then again all this just underlines the importance of proceeding. I wrote in more detail about the delays in government policy recently.

We've advertised a top level position which will help co-ordinate the roll-out of Iindaba. This is a really cutting edge job, and we're looking forward to high quality applicants. Spread the word, please!