The Harbinger


You can see the future, and it works

August 5th, 2009

The Daily Dispatch of East London, a relatively small newspaper, is experimenting with new media in a way that is showing up their much larger, wealthier colleagues.

Last week, they published Broken Homes: How Eastern Capes Housing Plan Has Failed the Poor , an in-depth investigation into the problems with housing in the Eastern Cape. The full story was published online and then run as a series in the paper over a few days.

The paper used the new media tools well, with powerful videos, graphics, background documentation and timelines, all coherently and engagingly presented. But what set this apart was that it was driven by high-quality reporting which was breaking new ground and commanding the attention of the authorities who were under scrutiny.

We were told that so poor was some of the housing, and so bad the rip-off by some contractors, that the province needed to spend R360-m fixing already-built housing. They had a video interview with housing MEC Nombulelo Mabandla saying that she would not abandon the emerging builders responsible for this – but would rather retrain and try them again.

They told us of people who had to be put up in cardboard shacks because their new houses fell down; of government houses being used as second, holiday homes; of ghost towns emerging as people abandoned the new homes they had waited so long for.

One could click on pictures from seven different towns, to see how things were faring in different places, or on different tabs for different material. In each place, they had videos, a blog account of their visit their, and a map. There was also space to comment on the work.

It was spunky stuff by reporter Gcina Ntsaluba and picture-man Theo Jeptha. But I suspect it is editor and self-confessed geek, Andrew Trench, who should share much of the credit for bold experimentation and a clever use of his limited resources.

The Dispatch is building a reputation. Two years ago, they swept national journalism awards with their work on Frere Hospital. Last year, they did an excellent print and online expose of the killing of Somali’s in their area, including a riveting interview with a jailed killer and an account of spending time living with scared Somalis in the townships. (Full declaration: that venture was supported by our Taco Kuiper Fund for Investigative Journalism).

They also did a great road trip with their staff blogging as they drove around their region. As a result, they now have an interactive map that allows you to click on towns all over the Eastern Cape and read their guide to it.

They are showing up their colleagues, many of whose websites are either half-dead or allow journalism of a standard so low that they would never allow it into their newspapers. That sort of work is probably damaging their brand, rather than growing it.

Rather than sit back and mourn the slow death of newspapers around the world, and the gradual decline of most of ours, at least some journalists are experimenting with the potential of new media to take journalism onto exciting new paths full of potential and thrills. They may not know how they will every pay for online journalism, but they are learning new and fresh ways to tell stories using tools that were not available to journalists before.

Some newspapers are just harvesting as much profit as possible before the internet kills them. Our broadcasters are not doing much, though they are often best placed to exploit their brands and their audiences online.

Perhaps the best lesson from the Dispatch is that it requires vision, commitment and smartness rather than lots of money to experiment and break ground. What they have done is not hugely expensive, but it does require an editor and a newsroom prepared to stretch what resources they have.

If you take a look at Broken Homes, you will see the future, and it works.

*This first appeared in Business Day, 5 August 2009

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Print

1 Comment Add your own

  • 1. Online pathfinders: a gre&hellip  |  October 6th, 2009 at 11:17 am

    [...] you can tell are very comfortable with multimedia. They also look like they had loads of fun. As Anton Harber said of the last Dispatch online project (on RDP housing in the province), this is the future of journalism and it makes me proud that the [...]

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Anton Harber: Media

Anton Harber

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Department of Useless Information

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

Worth Reading

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

Other writings

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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