Vuvuzela is the proudly loud and outspoken website for students and staff at the University of Witwatersrand.

Powered by the students at the Wits School of Journalism, Vuvuzela appears both in print and online. As part of their course requirements, the Department of Journalism's career-entry students, gather news, write, design, publish and distribute these publications weekly.

Funding for these efforts comes from sponsors as well as advertising sold.

A weekly production schedule looks like this:

The process kicks off early on Monday mornings, when the Journalism Honours class holds a news conference at 8.30am to discuss plans for the paper and website for the week.

Editorial roles and weekly duties are rotated so that each student can develop a rounded sense of what print and online production entails.

During the news conference stories are pitched by each member of the class and suggestions are made for any stories that should be adopted or followed up. Some stories are intended for the paper while others are specifically pitched for online.

Upcoming Wits events and photo opportunities for that week are also discussed and the Photo Editor for the week makes sure that enough photos will be taken.

But producing Vuvuzela doesn’t excuse students from attending class and so after news conference story-chasing is put on hold until 1pm. Making a story happen in the afternoon involves emailing, phoning and smsing, as well as setting up appointments, doing internet researches and hunting high and low for the right person to talk to.

Class on Tuesday runs from 9am until 1pm and thereafter the mad rush begins to finish gathering the necessary information and start typing up articles before deadline.

Print deadlines are usually set for Tuesday or Wednesday, while the online team contributes at least one new story to the website every day. A daily photo and poll are uploaded too.

For the newspaper, Wednesdays provide time for all print content to be gathered and sub-edited. With only 24 hours left until the paper needs to be finished, the design team also starts to lay out a few of the pages.

Thursdays are manic as every class member busies themselves with production. Each designer is assigned a page and headlines suggestions are brainstormed as they are needed.

Completed pages are printed out and subbed two or three times until they are given a final sign-off by a lecturer in charge.

The newspaper’s deadline is 2pm at which time the final design is converted into the necessary file format and electronically sent to the Beeld’s office.

The class then waits for a call from Beeld to confirm that everything is in order, after which most students head either home or to the Pig.

Printed Vuvuzelas – 10 000 of them – are delivered to the Richard Ward building at 11am the next day. The Journalism Honours students are responsible for the paper’s distribution and various distribution routes assigned, both on and off campus.

East campus, West campus, Education campus, Med School. Business school, the five Braamfontein residences, the Parktown and Hillbrow residences as well.

After distribution the online team has one responsibility left and the leading stories from each week’s paper are uploaded to the site.

Friday 1pm finally signals the start of a well-deserved weekend, until Monday morning when Vuvuzela starts all over again.

Read Vuvuzela's code of ethics