June 13th, 2007
I have returned from a few days abroad and come home to find a new daily newspaper and two new television news channels (CNBC and Al Jazeerah International). It is extaordinary how fluid our media market is.
I have purposely declined comment on The Times, as I know from bitter personal experience that it takes time for a new paper to find its feet and its soul, and it is too easy to rush to early judgement.
I was amused to hear, however, that at the rival Star newsroom, the paper is known as Sunday Times Daily, or STD.
I also was struck by the internal antagonism to the newspaper among at least some of those in the same company which publishes it, Johncom. The senior people of BDFM (publishers of Business Day and the Financial Mail, and half-owned by Johncom) are extremely critical of the new paper and the large investment in it. They fear that Business Day is a prime target of its new half-sister.
BDFM has made its own investment recently in The Weekender, its Saturday paper. I enjoy the Weekender a lot, but there has to be concern that its advertising level is still low and its sales, though ahead of target, are only about 10 000.
The senior people of Sunday Times are, in turn, angry at some of the things said by their colleagues. They are particularly upset about an anonymous article in Maverick magazine trashing The Times and showing a striking insider knowledge. They believe that the source of the article is in their own building and it is attempted sabotage.
Johncom at the moment is a tense place. Perhaps that inevitable when you are launching bold new products and spending lots of money. Let’s hope they can put this aside and concentrate on making their newspapers succeed.
Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Print, TV
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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3 Comments Add your own
1. Ray H | June 14th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Anton - We are so focused on meeting deadline, never mind office politics. : )
2. Karl | June 14th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
There’s not much point meeting deadline if the paper isn’t delivered on time.
I think there have been eight editions of the paper thus far. I’ve received one before 9 am.
3. Trevor | July 2nd, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I think AJE is actually quite good, your thoughts Prof?
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