Online speech -based news package

 A speech is a spoken expression of ideas or opinions, which is delivered by someone who is speaking in front of a group of people. It is usually based on one ideology. For this news package, we had to find an online speech on YouTube and thereafter produce a news story based on whatever speech we chose. We had to access speeches not older than five years. I initially had no idea which speech I was to use because I had to consider the angle I would use to write my news story and I wanted something that would relate to people and get people discussing, especially since I once again had to use social media platforms.

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.