Community Podium
(Zimbabwe)
Challenges
Telling stories with, not only about, community members.
Solution
Make citizen journalism about dialogue.
Nkosikhona Dibiti, founder of Community Podium, explains that the process of training citizen journalists, supporting them with mentorship, and fact-checking and editing their stories, is time-consuming. But it’s worth the effort to identify important angles which they can report on with nuance and local perspectives.
Community Podium has mobilized its diaspora audience to donate to support the causes they cover.
Community members trained have gone on to work as journalists for other media, demonstrating a ripple effect in increasing representation in journalism.
The takeaway: Working with citizen journalists brings new perspectives – but to ensure the work is not extractive and that editorial standards are upheld, relationship-building needs to be a long-term effort, taking community members’ needs into account. The kind of feedback loops you’d use to develop dialogue with audience members can also work to strengthen relationships with contributors.
Takeaway
Working with citizen journalists brings new perspectives – but to ensure the work is not extractive and that editorial standards are upheld, relationship-building needs to be a long-term effort, taking community members’ needs into account. The kind of feedback loops you’d use to develop dialogue with audience members can also work to strengthen relationships with contributors.