(On Sunday Edition we serve you a cocktail of the week’s major stories and how we treated them. We get our reporters to tell us about how they covered the stories they worked on during the week. )
 

Sunday Edition put the spotlight on community stories. On the September 7 edition of the show, Fiifi Koomson took listeners to a dungeon of drug barons and peddlers.

It’s called Tinka Island, although it’s not surrounded by water. He also took listeners to Mensah Guinea! It’s not a country but a slum community here in Accra.

Listeners were also served some of the happenings inside the JOY FM newsroom – How one man loves to create contracted forms of every name. So what’s your name? Benedicta? This man will call you Dicta. Or Chantelle? You’re Chant.

The first item was the award-winning show, Hotline. Within 15 minutes show host Fiifi Koomson played the second and last part of Seth Kwame Boateng’s documentary titled Buying Life.

“You see so many children are dying because their parents, brothers, sisters did not know that these little ones had cancer infections. Within the next fifteen minutes Seth Kwame Boateng presents the second and last part of his Hotline documentary titled Buying Life. He’s been speaking to doctors, nurses and parents of cancer victims. With this story you could save your own child or a friend’s child from losing their lives to childhood cancers.”

Hotline airs 8:30 am every Thursday on the Super Morning Show and is repeated at 6:15pm on Sundays. It’s a great documentary programme that tells the stories of the ordinary person - giving voice to the voiceless and speaking truth to power. Tune in this Thursday to the show.

The second item discussed on the show was Luv FM’s Erastus Asare Donkor’s trip to the drugs hub of Tinka Island. Tinka Island is not a piece of land surrounded by water. It’s a small area of hard drugs users.

The story about Tinka Island was the lead story on Monday’s edition of Newsnight on Joy FM.

“There have been exchanges of gunfire in that community before over territory between the drug lords.”

Managing a choke

News editor at Joy FM, Dzifa Bampoe, is a seasoned broadcaster. This showed in how she managed a choke just at the start of Monday’s edition of Newsnight.

Her announcement of “Good evening and welcome to Newsnight” was followed by a pause. Co-host of the show Evans Mensah stepped in immediately.
Dzifa’s professional handling of the situation ensured the news was not unnecessarily disrupted.

Mensah Guinea
On Friday 5^th September, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, AMA, demolished hundreds of structures at Mensah Guinea here in Accra, saying insanitary conditions there are largely to blame for the cholera epidemic in the capital.

At least 16 people have been killed in the latest outbreak of cholera in the area.

“At a point, I got scared because when the excavator started moving there were persons who were in the way of the machine. It was a very chaotic situation,” Francis Abban who covered the incident said.

“It was that bad. I saw somebody sitting close to a heap of rubbish with bank and egg stew.”

A lot has happened since then. A crew from the Joynews channel on Multi TV was at the scene yesterday to find out how the displaced persons were coping.

The Accra Mayor Alfred Vanderpuye ordered their arrest accusing them of fabricating stories about the homelessness of the residents. The driver was taken to the police station. But Joynews’ Joojo Cobbinah managed to escape.

Also featuring on the show was an investigation by Joy news which revealed that though treatment for cholera is supposed to be free, per a government policy, some health facilities in Accra were charging patients.

The community stories duo

Kwakye Afreh Nuamah and Michaela Anderson are two names which have now become synonymous with community and rural community stories here in the Joy newsroom.

But what motivates them to do what they do? Fiifi Koomson played an interview he had had with the two. It was an interesting conversation.

“There’s a man in the newsroom who loves to call people by his own version of the contracted forms of their names. In order words, he has the short form of every name. In the newsroom this man himself seems to have earned for himself many names – American Man, Otumfuo, Teacher Kofi, Daasebre Akuamoah, Ote kokoosoo, Kuntunkununku, etc etc. I’m talking about Emmanuel Adjei the Business News editor.”

Here’s how he calls colleagues in the newsroom - Francisca is Cisca, Kuuku is Cooks, Fiifi is Fii, Gakpo is Gaps and Araba is Rabs. Well, first let’s hear managing editor try out some of the contracted names.

So why does Emma create these names? Join us same time next week as he tries to explain his reasons.