The municipal journalism project began in 2005 as a joint venture of Idasa and the Consolidation of Municipal Transformation Programme (CMTP), funded by the Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG) and the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID-UK) and managed by Deloitte.

Idasa’s Media Programme had been working with local media – community radio and small commercial newspapers – in dealing with challenges of reporting the story of our local democracy. We then conducted a needs assessment to establish the situation with respect to coverage of municipal issues by local media. This revealed among other things, that the relationship between municipalities and the local media was often affected by issues such as the lack of understanding of the role of the media by councillors and officials, and lack of understanding of how municipalities operate and how to read municipal budgets by the journalists. As a result we proposed an intervention consisting of a training component for the local journalists and municipal communicators, and a public discussion component involving municipal, media and civil society representatives.

Of central concern to us was the challenge facing journalists in reporting on municipal issues and how they could improve their coverage of these issues so as to empower citizens with information. An assumption was that an informed citizen is in a better position to act and hold accountable the councillors they have elected to represent them. We believe that this challenge remains, especially in the light of recent service delivery protests in different parts of the country.

In 2008/9 Idasa’s Media Programme received funding from the Open Society Foundation of South Africa to extend this municipal journalism project to two municipal areas – Amathole in the Eastern Cape and Eden in the Western Cape. This report is about this intervention.

This report covers all the phases of the project in these municipal areas. It begins with a brief description of the project, its main goals and objectives, to provide a background. It then describes phase one of the project, about the initial visits to municipal areas. This is divided into a description of the process of identifying municipal areas and actual visits to each of these, and an analysis of these initial visits. For the project’s second phase, training workshops, an overview of each workshop is given, followed by a narrative of its implementation in each municipal area. The final phase of the workshop, municipal journalism seminars, is presented in a brief narrative, followed by excerpts from presentations and discussions, and resolutions made in each municipal area. This is followed by a brief account of the ongoing support, including the results of the competition for best print and radio reports. Appendices cover the content of training, register of workshop participants and seminar delegates and workshop schedules.

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