(Re)Learning to Listen
The last few weeks have entailed a lot of shifts in my life, the biggest being stepping away from my venture, Her Zimbabwe. As I thought through the right words to express in my farewell note featured on the website, I went through many thoughts about what to say and how. And quickly, I realised that I was making the process all about me and what I wanted to say.
As I re-evaluated my approach during a long calming walk, it finally hit me.
The post shouldn’t even be about me.
As I thought through my four-and-a-half year long journey, many faces came to my mind. My Masters’ dissertation supervisor who gave me the time and space to do my research the way I envisioned it (therefore, giving me scope to come up with the idea that is seed that grew into Her Zimbabwe), my friends who bought into the idea the minute I mentioned it and helped in so many diverse ways. The team of people I have worked with over the years who have built the infrastructure of what Her Zimbabwe is today; an office that employs five people (full-time) and over 10 freelancers in a country with a crippling rate of unemployment. And the readers, the followers and the fans. And my dear mother, that most wonderful of cheerleaders who offers me endless support to explore the full range of my creativity.
It’s a recurrent refrain I have heard in the months that I have been here at CUNY; that we must always talk to our audience and listen to what they really want, letting go of the idea that we know it all even if we mean well by this.
Who is your audience? What do they want? What do they need? Where are they?
Sometimes we are hesitant to really ask, to really talk to who we want to serve and to really listen. Because we are afraid that our audience will not agree with us. That we will have to *gasp* listen to other opinions and change direction. It’s a position of vulnerability, and humility, which I think is what journalism — in its essence — is really about. It is about taking a position of authority, but while also being open enough to admitting to not knowing every aspect of an issue.
I don’t have much more to share now as I reflect on new beginnings and chapters. But this is the most important thing this programme continues to teach me.
