By Adam Wakefield

A quick survey of Whittles’ career reveals that he has worked in radio, television production, written media, and multimedia. As his career has progressed, Whittles says he has learned to appreciate the unique impact each medium can make upon an audience.

“I enjoyed radio because it allowed me to explore instant news reporting, on the ground, as it happens reporting. Currently, I’m really enjoying print because it has allowed me to contemplate a bit longer on my ideas and produce news that’s truly original and comprehensive,” Whittles explains.

It is film, however, that is Whittles’ first love. He has made two documentaries, Never Dies and Freedom Day - Not Freedom, both focused on the subject of hip hop, and a short IsiXhosa comedy film, Via Mdantsane.

A reason Whittles is inseparably attached to film is being able to watch the reaction of the audience to his work, a “most gratifying experience” no other medium is able to offer.

Whittles has worked in the media for over seven years, which is no mean feat in an era of budget pressures, declining advertising revenue and channel disruption. To him, the local journalism industry’s current health is characterised by professional classism even though all journalists are faced by daily news pressure.

“There's a lot of money being pumped into keeping up with the digital migration currently taking place in newsrooms across the world. I also see a lot of media companies investing heavily in meeting the increasing appetite for instant news,” Whittles says.

“Sadly, what I've noticed is a sort of classism develop where colleagues who consider themselves as quality investigative journalists try to distance their work from that of entry level graduates or first time journos who make mistakes in the field.”

Whittles believes it’s a type of “supremacy” that assumes investigative journalism means more than tabloid or left-field stories. Ultimately, the impact of a story is measured by the audience's engagement and reaction to it, so such supremacy is misplaced.

“Also, I see journalists taking pride in work that has a lot of shares online but not a lot of substance. What I'd like to see is more investigative entertainment and sports journalism that interrogates something more than celebrity couple hook-ups and beef, or quota systems,” he says.

Given the daily pressures Whittles faces as a journalist, it is through hip hop that he decompresses to ready himself for the coming news day.

“It's my culture and it's how I have fun, contemplate, relax or just chill out, and I mean hip hop, not rap music. DJing, breakdancing, graffiti writing and going to gigs. I also dig fishing,” Whittles says.

“When my buddies from the Eastern Cape are in Joburg, we try to catch some bass and a bit of carp, though I'm no specimen fisherman. When I'm home, we head to the beach in East London, searching for grunters.”

It is home that Whittles believes taught him to be humble. Coming from Kings Williams Town (KWT), a regional centre, Whittles says the first thing you realise upon arriving in Johannesburg is that there is a much greater understanding of what the urban world is.

“Be it fashion, politics, social interaction, almost everything. KWT has also revealed the inequality of consciousness that exists in small towns in the neglected provinces. I had no idea the hip hop community was huge in SA or that being politically conscious was for the youth,” Whittles says.

“I discovered those things after moving to Pretoria where I studied at TUT. The entrenched racism of South African society was also made clearer to me when I saw my fellow black students speak up against injustices committed against them by white people, which I thought was normal and couldn't be questioned.” 

Having survived in the industry for over half a decade, Whittles prays five years from now that he will not be part of any media organisation that attempts “to convince people that they have a responsibility to maintain an oppressive status-quo by voting for either wolf or the jackal”, like in the American election just passed.

“I would want to be a journalist with multiple years of experience in all forms of story-telling. I don't fantasise about joining a big news agency or reputable international media outlet because, honestly, they all have their own agendas which dictate the news as a commodity to be sold to make a profit,” Whittles says.

“I would love to practice journalism in a world where the media organisations don't decide news content based on what will generate money, but based on what is in the public interest.”

For more information, connect with Whittles on Twitter.