IAJ: Election Reporting

The Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ) is conducting a three-day course on Election Reporting from 28-30 January in Johannesburg, 10-12 February in Durban, 16-18 February in Cape Town, and on 23-25 February 2009 in Johannesburg.

The upcoming elections are set to be intriguing at the very least, if recent political developments are anything to go by. This course will look at how to report on politics, particularly elections, in a dynamic and changing environment. It will look at innovative ways to beef up and make our election coverage interesting.
It will also look at how to report on statistics, such as voter trends, which form an important part of election coverage. We will also look at some of the ethical issues related to reporting on elections, drawing on experiences in South Africa but also in other countries.

We will attempt to demystify some of the myths around election coverage, making it easier to report on for people who are not used to reporting on politics.
This course should appeal to political reporters and aspiring political reporters. It will be pitched mainly at mid-career journalists but could accommodate more inexperienced journalists too. This course is aimed at journalists working in either mainstream or community newsrooms, as well as freelancers, who will be involved in reporting on the 2009 National and Provincial elections in South Africa.

Participants are expected to have basic reporting and writing skills. It will help participants identify issues that are important to the voters, rather than allow politicians to set agendas and decide the issues on which the elections will be contested. It will assist participants to use tools like opinion polls and the census to drill deeper and give context to their reporting.

Another focus of the training, which will be very practical and outcomes bases, will be to help participants come up with a plan for covering the elections: breaking it into three distinct reporting periods: before the election, the actual elections and afterwards. A key outcome of the training will be to assist participants generate quality story ideas that give a human face to their reportage.

Contact Persons:

• Mabatho Sekwala, email: mabatho@iaj.org.za, tel: 011 484 1765, fax: 011 484 2282
• Jerry Mmutlane, email: jerry@iaj.org.za, tel: 011 484 1765, fax: 011 484 2282

For more information on IAJ, click here.