March 14th, 2009
At a time when journos are being retrenched across the country quicker than Wall Street bankers, there is a push to start a Professional Journos’ Association. A great idea.
For too long, the debate around the state of our journalism has been driven by special interests or enemies of journalism. It is time journo took hold of things and formed their own association.
The SA National Editors Forum is an important body, but its membership is limited to those at the top. Since the journalists unions of the 1980s withered away, there has been a major gap in the professional life of journos. Maybe now it will be filled.
The proposed name for the new organisation is ProJourn. I think ProJo would be better. Join the debate over the constitution on Facebook.
Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation, Media training
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
Among the main results from the World Association of Newspaper’s Newsroom Barometer (a survey of 700 editors and senior news execs in 120 countries) for this year:
- 86% believe integrated print and online newsrooms will become the norm, and 83% believe journalists will be expected to be able to produce content for all media within five years.
- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.
- A plurality - 44% - believe on-line will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year. Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.
- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year’s survey. Only one-third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure. - From Editors’ Weblog
There is a crisis in trust and communication between the British public and the mainstream media, a new report has concluded. The gulf between public expectations of news provision and the actual nature of articles, which oscillate between esoteric or irresponsible, leaves readers feeling confused and excluded.
The report, entitled ‘Public Trust In The News’ was conducted by researchers from Manchester and Leeds Universities and was published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. - From Editors Weblog
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)
A recent piece by me on the Zapiro cartoon row which appeared in Comment is Free, a Guardian blog.
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1 Comment Add your own
1. amandzing | March 17th, 2009 at 9:44 am
nice idea, but inbetween doing our jobs and…doing our jobs, where would we get the time to do anything else?
news editor, trainer, layout artist, photgrapher, photo editor, reporter, researcher, hand holder and general dogsbody. all in one.
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