Leading media and entertainment group Johnnic Communications will contribute R4,6-million towards a new teaching facility for the Rhodes University school of journalism in Grahamstown, group CEO Connie Molusi has announced.
The grant, funded through the Johncom Media Development Trust, will be paid out over a five-year period, and it comes as part of a long-standing partnership between the company and Rhodes University.
”Rhodes has been the main source of recruitment for us. Most of our journalists are graduates of the university’s journalism school,” said Molusi.
”Rhodes has one of the premier training facilities for journalists in Southern Africa and we would like to see that continue,” he added.
Molusi noted that Johncom has supported other projects run by the journalism department, underwriting several Steve Biko scholarships, a schools festival competition, a chair of new media, a new computer lab and computer workstations.
The head of the department of journalism and media studies at Rhodes University, Professor Guy Berger, said: ”Johncom’s investment has persuaded the university to give the go-ahead for our new building.”
The complex, dubbed the Africa Media Matrix, will give staff and students a spatial hub that will integrate theory and practice.
The department currently enrols close to 600 students across six different degree options and provides them with education in print, broadcast and internet journalism, as well as media management.
Among the Rhodes graduates employed at Johncom businesses are Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day; Caroline Southey, editor of the Financial Mail; and Ray Hartley, deputy editor of the Sunday Times.
Molusi himself is also a Rhodes graduate, as is the managing director of Johncom’s publications in the Eastern Cape, Thembela Sofisa.
Berger said the total cost of the new facility is R24-million and that it will be completed by the end of 2005. Other donors and the university will cover the balance of costs after the Johncom donation.
The building will include advanced technology and enable video-conference link-ups with other media teaching institutions around the continent, he said.
The Rhodes department runs the Highway Africa conference, which is now in its eighth year and the world’s largest annual gathering of African journalists. It also set up the African Economic Editors Forum, which holds its fifth conference this year. — I-Net Bridge