Media workshop 2008

Walking into the classroom I didn’t know just what to expect, but by then I knew that it wouldn’t be just any other ordinary lecture. Even though Stephan had no previous studies in the media, he did know a lot about the German media, especially the print media, which is what we focused on. It was interesting to learn about the German press, especially how regionalised it is. In my own experiences, regional papers have been smaller and less interesting affairs that focus only on local news and not what I think is ‘real news’. They are less human interest pieces and don’t focus so much on the area that they are based in, like the regional newspapers I know.
After the breakdown of how newspapers in Germany work, we were put into groups and each given a publication. We had to make collages showing the different aspects of our chosen publications. My group fought tooth and nail to do the report on the Bild newspaper. It’s a tabloid newspaper that reminded us a lot of the South African newspaper, Daily Sun. Many things from the layout, and use of exclamation marks in the headlines, are similar to Daily Sun. I was sort of put in charge of my group because I’m studying journalism, but in the end it was group effort.

Some days later, we visited one of the papers that we discussed in class, the Südwest Presse. It is the regional newspaper for the South of Germany and it is the leader in this market. We had a Q &A session with the editors of the paper after they told us a little about the paper. Again everyone expected me to ask all the questions but I basically knew all that I needed to know from their talk. I tried asking about things that I learned in journalism class last year, but I think other people had better questions than I did. We were also given drinks (NON ALCOHOLIC), and I admit that I (and two other people whose names won’t be mentioned) went a little overboard. All in all it was very informative and they gave us copies of the newspaper which I haven’t gotten around to reading, but will soon.

by Solomzi Khoza

 

Last Update (23/01/08)