February 19th, 2006
In the middle of their story about the “vast wasteland of verbiage” produced by blogging, this weekend’s Financial Times told readers to go to a special blog to discuss the article. A lively discussion started online, and that was a good illustration of the nature of blogging.
The FT’s piece had the kind of thoughtfulness, elegance, research and careful editing which one seldom gets on blogs, signalling how much we still need well-run newspapers to signal to us what it is important, what isn’t and to convey it in a way that is readable and enlightening. But it was the very blogs being denigrated in the article which allowed commentators and analysts to engage in immediate and rich public debate around the issue with author Trevor Butterworth.
His article represents a new wave of realist thinking about blogs and the internet. Far from the over-enthusiastic and somewhat naïve writings of the likes of Dan Gillmore in We, The Media, there is a new attitude that says blogs have their value, but they are also limited. Butterworth cites a well-known blogger: “The democratic promise of blogs has just produced more fragmentation and segregation at a time when seeing the totality of things – the purvey of old media – is arguably more important.�
Are we ready to live, he asks, in “a world without war reporting, without investigative reporting, without nearly any of the things we depend on newspapers for�?
Online a debate started immediately, both on the FT’s special blog about this article, and a number of other important media blogs, like CBS’ Public Eye or Philip Lett’s blog in which he argues:
“I think the real blogging revolution is not about replacing mainstream media, but in it’s first phase is about augmenting and challenging corporate media. And I believe the second phase of the blogging revolution will be about allowing anyone and their dog anywhere in the world to share in the wealth of the Internet.â€?
Two critical points emerge. The first is to see the value of blogging as an addition to and enhancement of more traditional media, rather than something that supercedes it or makes it less valuable or important. And the second is the importance of journalists’ blogs. By blogging, reports and editors will open themselves up to debate and scrutiny, will draw value from more immediate and fuller public engagement in their work and will enhance their journalism.
In short, blogging does not replace the rigours of journalism (checking facts, balancing, composing, editing, presenting …) but it is an enormously valuable tool for those engaged in that work.
Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Online
Anton Harber: Media
Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio
Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)
(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)
“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.
“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report
“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.
Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)
Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011
Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn
Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.
What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)
Reflections on Journalism in the Transition to Democracy - Ethics & International Affairs 18, no. 3 (2004).
Journalism in the Age of the Market
- Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture, Centre for Civil Society, University of KZN, Aug 2002
The Untimely Death of SA’s Finest Daily - Sunday Times, May 2005
“Two Newspapers, Two Nations? The Media and the Xenophobic Violence” from Go Home or Die Here, edited by Shireen Hassim Tawana Kupe and Eric Worby (WUP, 2008)
Remarks at Goedgedacht Forum, October 2008
The rise of social network journalism - From The 2009 Flux Trend Review (Macmillan, 2008)
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