» Fear and loathing in the industry

Fear and loathing in the industry

March 25th, 2009

Latest news is that Mail & Guardian staff have been warned that they will be told in two weeks who is going to be retrenched and who can stay. Attempts are being made to prevent this, but things look tough.

That comes in the week that it became clear that the 100 staff of Telkom Media are finally getting their close-down packages. That only took a year since it was obvious that the operation was not going to survive.

With retrenchments at Media24 and at Independent already under way, there is blood on the streets of the media industry. The consequences are severe: already small newsrooms are shrinking further; another lot of skills and experience will be lost; coverage will diminish; and in pay-TV, the prospect of competition gets further and further away. Of the four groups which were licensed to compete with DSTV, one has pulled out and done a deal with DSTV (eTV); one has collapsed in a heap (Telkom); one is tiny (WalkonWater) and one has not yet seen the light of day.

Just when we need a diverse, free and independent media more than ever, it is shrinking!

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation, Print

3 Comments Add your own

1. amandzing | April 7th, 2009 at 9:59 am

the writing has been on the wall for a long time. staff quit, and nobody was hired to replace them, layout artists became passe as that function devolved to reporters while subeditors dual task as proof readers. on top of that yearly increases have just been cut and the workload is higher than ever before. just need to bite the bullet i suppose, i’d rather be overworked and underpaid than have to shake a tin on the street…
2. Kameraad Mhambi | April 20th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

There’s been a lot of blood in newsrooms in the UK and USA as well.
3. Siyabonga | April 21st, 2009 at 8:12 am

Should we say that this is a bad thing or not. I, at least, will be continuing my studies full time in the US with a paid graduate assistantship and a full scholarship. I count myself blessed.

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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)