What was the ANC thinking?
Was the symbolism of the ANC’s centenary celebration carefully chosen, or the result of lack of thought?
Continue Reading Add comment January 15th, 2012
A year of healthy and noisy contestation
It has been a year of vigorous and healthy contestation. We have fought over the independence of the judiciary, the freedom of the media and the appropriateness of presidential appointments. We have seen combat in parliament, the courts, the streets, the ruling party, the biggest opposition party, the provinces, the cities, and even the cabinet. We have arm-wrestled over political power, policy, ideology, history, language and song lyrics.
Continue Reading 1 comment January 7th, 2012
Apocalypse not quite yet
We are apocalyptic, us South Africans. If our democracy is less than perfect, we say it is dying. If a Bill passed by parliament threatens journalists, it is the end of freedom and farewell to investigative reporting. If we lose a political battle, we think we have lost the final war.
Continue Reading Add comment January 7th, 2012
Gift of the Sponsors
You might have noticed a pattern to local coverage of the Somali famine: it was almost all seen through the lens of one organization, Gift of the Givers (GOTG). I decided to find out more when I saw how many media organizations were “traveling with” GOTG, how much media coverage the organisation received, and how relentlessly positive it was.
Continue Reading Add comment January 7th, 2012
Deon du Plessis: Hard to like, easy to admire
No individual impacted more on South African newspapers in recent years than Deon du Plessis, the Daily Sun publisher, who died on the weekend.
Continue Reading Add comment January 7th, 2012
Was it a riot? A protest? A rally? Or just chaos?
It is worth comparing some of the front pages for the day after the Julius Malema hearings in the ANC’s central-Johannesburg Luthuli House headquarters.
Continue Reading Add comment September 2nd, 2011
Well done, Dispatch
Amidst the furore over inappropriate front pages, it is worth noting a smart but barely noticed move from East London’s Daily Dispatch.
Continue Reading Add comment August 31st, 2011
Newspapers sales on the slide
Things are shifting in our newspaper world, judging by the latest circulation figures. Most daily newspapers showed serious decline, while weekly papers did better. Afrikaans papers plummeted in circulation, while the isiZulu papers thrived, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures for the second quarter of 2011.
Continue Reading Add comment August 31st, 2011
Media freedom starts in the newsroom
Some of our editors seem determined to be their own worst enemies. The Sowetan, still reeling from the ham-handed way it dealt with the Eric Miyeni controversy, published a front page on Monday which managed to lower the bar on bad taste even further. “Sies” was the headline above pictures of two on-duty law enforcement officers having sex. It was accompanied by a note in which the editors tried to say they felt obliged to splash this on their front page in the public interest.
Continue Reading Add comment August 31st, 2011
Of frogs and fractals
In 1951, a British mathematician and Quaker pacifist named Lewis Fry Richardson was researching the unlikely question of whether there was a link between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. He noticed that they often could not even agree on the length of their borders: the Spain-Portugal border was quoted at between 987 and 1214km and the Netherlands-Belgium border at between 380 and 499km. (Public Lecture, University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011)
Continue Reading Add comment August 7th, 2011
The importance of not being Eric
Eric Miyeni is an irritating distraction. This former columnist has become a leading figure in the attempt to drag our national debate to the lowest depths, to trade in personal abuse and low-level threats imbued with a deep anti-intellectualism.
Continue Reading Add comment August 7th, 2011
The best days since Watergate
THESE are glorious days for journalism. We celebrate the end of the Rupert Murdoch era, in which he systematically degraded what we do and wielded a malign influence in London and Washington. His corruptive hold over the British establishment is broken, and this can only lead to a waning of his power and influence in the media world.
Continue Reading 1 comment July 15th, 2011
SA’s first iPad newspaper
Branko Brkic is an editor’s dream and a publisher’s nightmare. He is a groundbreaker in South African publishing. He boldly starts new titles, usually with brilliant content, design and marketing, and charges in headfirst – with admirable courage and independence of spirit.
Continue Reading Add comment July 15th, 2011