I therefore chose a recent speech. I took
the budget speech that the Minister of Finance delivered on the first week of
March. I knew this speech was going to be relevant and I was going to achieve
my goal in terms of telling the story. As much as I would have loved to base my
package on the whole speech at large, I could not due to the word count. I had
to choose one angle and I finally chose the one with regards to the increase of
social grants due in April- specifically the child support grant.
The grant is due to increase from R315 to
R330, which is a R15 difference. With the rise in teenage pregnancy and the
high number of dependents on the grant, I thought I could tackle this issue
especially this slight increase for such a huge demand of the grant. As always,
I took this to Facebook and tongues got wagging. I knew I had hit home when the
comments kept coming. All was not smooth, especially since we all know how
people on Facebook tend to find something to joke about even in the most
serious issues. But that did not phase
me at all because majority of my Facebook friends are intellectually
opinionated.
I think since I have been doing New Media
for a while, especially since I am now focusing on it, people actually
recognise the things I post on social media and this helps build up my
multimedia journalism profile.
The news story I had to write was quite
short- which was limiting. I managed to get quotes from people who are
dependent on the child support grant in order to make the story more interesting.
My interviewees were quite co-operative and everything went well in terms of
the story execution. The rest of the story was the facts and quotes from the
minister’s speech.
This was another package that I believe I
gave justice to in terms storytelling, engaging with the audience and choosing
a working angle. I am already looking forward to the following feature package
which includes producing a documentary.
