Recreating local journalism (part 1)

We need to build resilient and sustainable local news structures

Most disconnected citizens in rural Zimbabwe can hardly afford to buy a newspaper (photo by Harare Post)

What if all Zimbabwean citizens had access to the internet 24/7?

What if the country had a developed technological infrastructure that supports journalism?

What if the local media was free from repressive laws and government monopoly?

How would we (re)create quality, impact-focused journalism that cuts through the noise?

How would we (re)build a truly community-focused and resilient hyperlocal media?

How would we overcome inward barriers that inhibit us from producing the kind of journalism we envision?

I’ve been wrestling with these questions for several years and this has been a stumbling block in my efforts to try to help keep local journalism alive in Zimbabwe. In September, I began my academic year at Stanford University, courtesy of the John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowships, hoping to find answers to questions that have stuck in my mind since I began my journalism career about a decade ago.

Zimbabwe is one of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a struggling and complex media ecosystem. The situation has been the same for several decades, since the country gained its independence from white minority rule in 1980.

Two years after the ouster of Zimbabwe’s despotic ruler Robert Mugabe, the country’s media sphere, under Emmerson Mnangagwa, remains in dire straits, with little hope for reform.

Riot police assault a journalist in Zimbabwe (photo by Bulawayo24.com)

There are many other people like me who have dedicated their time to fixing our struggling local media — which faces repressive laws, polarization, lack of diversity and struggling or non-existent local news ecosystems and other challenges.

But our efforts are often hampered by state interference and the country’s numerous socio-economic and political woes beyond journalism.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking with James T. Hamilton, Hearst Professor of Communication and director of the Journalism Program at Stanford University, during one of our weekly fellows’ events.

I told him that one of the barriers thwarting efforts to reinvent local journalism in Zimbabwe is that almost everything in the country is broken and needs to be fixed.

“How do you convince people who have suffered from a broken health system, a crippled education system, and a struggling economy, among a litany of problems, that what must be fixed — or rather, what must be fixed first — is the media?” I asked.

Hamilton’s response to my question was that in struggling countries like Zimbabwe, it’s difficult to convince citizens about the real value of financially supporting quality, impact-driven journalism unless they can see that journalists are tackling issues that matter to them most.

I totally agree with Professor Hamilton’s sentiments. Zimbabwe’s media situation is terribly complex.

How does one explain that a country of about 16 million people does not have a single community radio station?

How does one further explain that a country whose population is largely rural does not have a single community newspaper serving local information needs?

How does one explain that a country with supposedly the highest literacy rate in Africa has a single television station that struggles to modernize, serving only a paltry urban audience which constitutes less than a quarter of the country’s population?

Several decades after independence, Zimbabwe has only one television station and no single community radio station as most rural citizens continue to live in news deserts

I don’t know how to explain it either. But the rhetorical questions above show the depth of the problems that face Zimbabwean media.

Given this complexity, where do we start? In my September Medium post, I argued that it remains crucial to fight systems that make it difficult for local media to flourish and serve community needs, so we need to identify new entry points to solve these challenges.

For me, this means focusing more on journalism’s internal problems, where we can begin to locate bright spots and concentrate on areas where we can have the most impact.

With time and effort, we can achieve what we have always longed for — a mission-driven media that puts communities at its center.

During a brainstorming session with my JSK colleagues this month, I sought to gather experimental ideas about new ways of storytelling and content distribution. One of my colleagues, Omri Assenheim, a fellow from Israel, joked that Zimbabwe has so many problems that it is difficult to brainstorm ideas to address all the challenges at once.

Although we all laughed, his joke had a serious point: Zimbabwe’s journalism challenges are so complex that it is difficult to figure out the right entry point to address them.

Brainstorming with a small team of JSK Fellows helped me learn that there is no single way of addressing journalism’s pressing challenges.

Tran Ha, a JSK alumna and a lecturer at the d.school, Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, has been mentoring me to use design thinking to locate the right entry point to begin to address Zimbabwe’s journalism challenges.

This month, I employed various methodologies, including systems analysis, user-centered design, and laddering, to reframe my project.

I am happy to report that my efforts are beginning to yield fruit, as I have finally made a clear breakthrough and continue to receive authentic and helpful feedback from my JSK colleagues about what I need to do for my project.

I also met with former JSK Fellows who have implemented novel ideas to solve some of journalism’s pressing challenges in complex environments, and I engaged in deep conversations with media and tech professionals around Silicon Valley, and professors from various departments and institutes at Stanford.

As I figure out how to digest some of the takeaways from my exploration, I seek to dig deep into several online resources, from journal papers to blog posts, to surface more ideas and insights that can help me find solutions to Zimbabwe’s journalism dilemma.

I am enthusiastic that my project — exploring local journalism experiments in storytelling, collaboration and sustainability models for hyperlocal media (my major focus this year)—is taking a form that I am designing myself.

I plan to refine my project further, employing user-centered design methods as it is equally important to co-create solutions with the very communities that we seek to serve.

In pursuit of this plan, I am engaging in sustained dialogue with local journalism leaders and civil society — the so-called audiences — as well as other stakeholders who matter in Zimbabwe, so that my work is informed by lived experiences and realities.

In my next post — part 2 of this installment—I plan to further explore how best we can recreate local journalism and build resilient structures beyond technology and platforms.

I am eager to engage, listen and test ideas. If you wish to share ideas about building sustainable local news ecosystems, I’d love to hear from you.

If you want to be part of a movement driven by the desire to keep local journalism alive in Zimbabwe — and if you’re keen to be part of what I am (re)creating, drop me a line on Twitter or email.