Work remotely, side-by-side.
Innovative Journalists Resource Hub Secure
Amidst this pandemic, remote work is our new norm. And it comes with its challenges including distraction from family or friends, divided attention and limited resources for maximum productivity. Learning to work better doesn’t happen just by taking our office habits home. It requires new systems and mindsets. It requires discipline and new habits to focus.
The Hub
an innovative virtual co-working space that offers support and space to journalists to connect, interact and bounce story ideas off each other, share skills and knowledge as well as promote reporting collaboration seeks to address these challenges. The Hub provides space to journalists and particularly investigative and freelancers to log into a virtual room or join an online chat channels to interact, share story ideas and receive mentorship from a ray of seasoned editors in residence and experts.
The Hub
is a project of Journalists Resource Hub – a Media resource Centre that collects, collates, equip, and impart media practitioners with free accessible training and searchable data sets. The Hub presently has training holes, private rooms for individual tasks and one-on-one mentorship with editors, editing suites and a resource centre with exclusive datasets from public bodies. The Hub also has a common social space that provides space for interaction and networking for all members.
The Hub’s Commitment to journalists’ community
Journalists’ best work is only possible when they feel safe. We at the Hub are committed to build a community where every practicing journalist feels like they belong. To us, that means inviting diverse voices in the community of journalism to be part of our journey and experience, and family and team of reporters and facilitators in creating equitable resources and opportunities for all.
We are committed to the ongoing work of being an all-inclusive resource center for all. The hub exists to help journalists bounce story ideas off each other and foster collaborations
Chambers
Like in the corridors of justice, magistrates have chambers in which some specific cases, and/or some specific parts of cases are heard from due to their sensitivity and confidentiality issues.
The hub’s chambers in more of a similar way, will be rooms where editors and/or writers will privately retreat to pitch stories, discuss or share content they believe will be safe just within themselves. This assures trust between particular parties based on how they build their trust on each other through the wider East African Journalism Network platform.
The chambers can be used as places of sharing classified information between concerned parties alone, with access to files and documents involved in this interaction remaining accessible only to those with privileges of being in that particular chamber.
Chambers can also be used as isolated offices for advancing story ideas with attention to specificity on how each building block and step taken will add value to the final investigative product. Whatever happens in the chambers remains in the chambers, and would only leave with consent from the members in that particular chamber.
Editing Suite
The term editing is broad and vaguely used sometimes. Operationally, the hub’s edit suite offers more beyond selecting and organizing visual, audio or text material to develop a coherent piece of communication.
The suite offers the editorial plan of a typical newsroom and is hinged on the decision-making or gatekeeping procedures.
The suites are where editors and journalists will be able to assess in detail the conformity of information (whether print, audio, visual, text or e-documents) meet the threshold of investigative pieces desired.
Editors will offer guidance, of course through a consensus with the journalists in this space. Journalists on the other hand will showcase to their preferred editors the progress of their work, besides challenges and shortcomings in a bid to find solutions to successfully execute compelling and even award-winning pieces of journalism.
Decisions on what to change, what to be added and what to be removed will be usually made here, though lots of such decisions can be primarily handled in the private chambers between the editors and the journalists they are working with.
Editors will also have a responsibility to furnish journalists with information (through documents and contacts) to improve their quality of work through discussions and decisions arrived at in the suites, besides general and specific previews.
Cafeteria
All work without play makes Robert a dull boy, goes an old saying which has remained relevant through generations.
The cafeteria will be an equivalent of a common room in a college or the wider newsroom space in a media house where hub members can interact beyond their specific projects. The discussions can rotate around familiarizing with each other, having opinionated talks over current and emerging issues, complimenting and critiquing of members’ works and generally networking.
The cafeteria is more of a venue for the members’ virtual Stammtisch: an informal group meeting held on a regular basis. It is similar to a large regular round table where this particular group meets. The cafeteria therefore will facilitate, the not so structured meeting, but rather a friendly get-together.
The cafeteria sessions can happen as regular as possible especially in the initial stages where the emphasis is on building a wider but strongly bonded network.
Sources
Journalism is lame without credible and detailed sources. Access to information in any country or democratic jurisdiction determines the quality of journalism and how the latter strengthens democracy in a mutual cycle.
The right to access information guarantees everyone the right of access to all information and documents related to the management of public affairs regardless of the status of the concerned person and the purpose for obtaining the required information. However, this right is easier read and written than implemented, thus compromising the quality of journalism in, not only East African countries but globally.
The right to access information helps journalists and citizens at large make decisions based on correct data.
It offers, or is, a necessary condition to fight corruption and mismanagement of public funds which is squarely among the core mandates of media- a gatekeeper or the fourth estate.
Besides offering a strong base for scientific research, strengthening economy, detecting violations and protecting rights and establishing a fertile ground for democracy, participatory and proper governance, achievement of rights to access information is an important mechanism that helps journalists gather facts and data that is key in attaining their professional function.
The hub’s coordinators and members will therefore seek to activate this legal provision of access to information to generate a bunker of information and sources to facilitate proper journalism. The sources in form of documents and even contacts will be accessible under this interface, both on free access to all and restricted access as far as classified information key for national security is concerned.
