By ROD AMNER and NYX MCLEAN
We have been quiet on the editorial front, not because we haven’t had much to say but simply because A LOT is going on.
If it is not our teaching responsibilities, it is mentoring our students through some recent challenging experiences, or it is this: Grocott’s Mail is taking over Cue for the National Arts Festival!
This is very exciting for us as editors, even if it is a little wild and has us checking whether we can increase our coffee budget over the next few weeks.
We know that there is going to be very little sleeping because 1) it is the National Arts Festival (NAF), and with it comes a whole lot of excitement and energy that Makhanda has been missing out on in recent years but also 2) we are going to be producing a daily four-page digital newspaper.
This four-pager will help you navigate the NAF by curating news and reviews and channelling the pulse of the festival.
For this, we are bringing in a team of specialists, including Steve Kretzmann, editor of The Critter, a respected independent platform for arts reviews and news, Steven Lang, former SABC and Grocott’s Mail editor, and Sam Carolus, multimedia wizard and Journalism and Media Studies Masters student.
Twenty-seven student journalists will join the team to bolster the ranks of our steadfast Grocott’s Mail Postgraduate Diploma journalists. We will be branching out to other platforms such as TikTok and re-energising some of our other accounts such as Instagram and YouTube. We will publish a complete list of all these channels in the next two weeks.
While this is going on, production at Grocott’s Mail will continue, and you can find us on our website and Facebook. We will also curate the weekly GMDirect that we distribute via email, WhatsApp and Facebook on Fridays.
Taking on Cue is an exciting opportunity for us as editors to work with a bigger team of seasoned journalists, up-and-coming journalists, and other media organisations who will all be here covering the fest!
We hope you enjoy the content coming your way over the next few weeks.
It has been a while since our community has been able to experience what we used to take for granted, and we recognise just what the fest means for all of us. Have a happy and safe National Arts Fest!
