Cape Town: First Step to Successful Journalism is Finding the Door into the Building

Abby and I co-wrote a story today! It was our first day. Just because we wrote it doesn't mean it's going into the newspaper, but hopefully it will get in somewhere.

We got to the newsroom this morning at 9:30, the appointed time for us to be there. Martine took us to the Cape Times News Editor, who put us at desks. We're across from each other, both using really, really old desktop PCs that are standing on old phonebooks. While we tried to log into the system, we got called in to the morning editorial meeting. Sybrand, the news editor, introduced us to the other reporters and they got into the stories they were supposed to do for the day. He basically yelled at them for not having enough/good enough story ideas. Then Abby and I were back at our desks with nothing to do, the other reporters having dispersed with nary a care for their new interns.

We puttered for a while and then Janet, a top person at the newspaper, came over and introduced herself and told us what we needed to know. Ten minutes later, Sybrand yelled across the newsroom:

"LYNNE! Do you do medical stuff?!"

I looked around and then pointed at myself. "Me?" I asked.

"Yes, you," he replied impatiently. "Do you do medical stuff?"

"Um, I think maybe Abby would be better suited," I said, since Abby is way more interested in health stuff than I am and I thought she would like to have the story.

He sent Abby to go see Janet, and she came back and told me that she had a story on an Autism Awareness thing 45 minutes away.

And I said, "I'm going with you."

At 1:00, we were in the car with our photographer Brandon, who was driving. He's a really nice guy and I'm glad we had him for our first assignment. We got out to the place, Planet Kids, and after more than one try, we got into the building. As it turns out, today is/was World Autism Awareness Day and Autism South Africa actually got them to light Table Mountain blue for the worldwide campaign to raise autism awareness. (http://www.lightitupblue.org) We interviewed the head of Autism Western Cape and the head of Autism South Africa, and it was really uncomfortable because they were essentially telling us what we had to write. They really wanted an advertisement in the Cape Times rather than an article about their event and autism in South Africa.

We interviewed two mothers too: one with the youngest diagnosed child in South Africa, a two year old, and a woman with two autistic sons under 5. She had to quit her job to stay home with her kids because there are almost no daycare facilities or schools that accept autistic children (and if they do, they do not cater to their specific needs). Autism is not known in South Africa like it is in the States. It is not well-publicized or understood. Children in rural areas have it the worst, because it is often thought that they are possessed by a demon. Their caregivers will make them drink bleach so that they will vomit up the demon or tie them to their beds. It's actually quite horrific.

Anyway, we got interviews and wrote a story on it--Abby and I have different writing styles, so it was a little difficult to get the story together, but we did and it's a lovely soft, human interest piece. I'm so proud of us! We'll see if anything happens with it.