The darkest of clouds hangs over South African journalism this week, following the admission by a former Cape Argus reporter that he took money from an ANC politician to assist in his intra-party battles.
Continue Reading Add comment July 14th, 2010
I was quoted on a site called sify.com saying this: “The World Cup made us crazy. Money was spent carefully. I think the government will have a tough time in maintaining the stadiums. They will soon turn into white elephants,” said Anton Harber, professor at the University of Witwatersrand. I did not know when and where I might have said such babble, nor did I remember ever speaking to a reporter named Abishek Roy.
Continue Reading Add comment July 14th, 2010
You have to be totally dismayed at the apparent collapse – again - of SABC governance. The hopes that this new board represented a fresh broom to sweep the rot out of the Auckland Park headquarters and re-establish a notion of independent, public service broadcasting, are rapidly fading.
Continue Reading Add comment May 23rd, 2010
Every new media technology has evoked fears that it will introduce foreign and dangerous ideas, break down social structures, run out of control and reduce us all to blathering idiots. Take writing. “It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides,” a monk wrote in the margins of a manuscript he was copying in a medieval monastery.
Continue Reading 2 comments April 27th, 2010
There is growing consensus that Apple’s sleek and elegant iPad represents the future of newspapers, magazines and books.
Continue Reading 2 comments April 27th, 2010
Watch out when a publisher uses words like “excellence” and “holistic strategy”. Look carefully when they say they are promoting an editor because of increased readership. That’s what happened to Mondli Makhanya of the Sunday Times last week, when he was booted upstairs to the position of editor-in-chief of Avusa newspapers.
Continue Reading 2 comments April 27th, 2010
Friday is the deadline for a deal for Tony O’Reilly to sell the Independent in London to Russian mogul Alexander Lebedev. Let’s hold thumbs.
Continue Reading Add comment February 23rd, 2010
One of America’s most prestigious journalism prizes, the George Polk Award, has gone to the anonymous cellphone videographer who captured the dying moments of Iraqi protestor Neda Agha-Soltan.
Continue Reading 1 comment February 21st, 2010
We have received 32 entries for the 4th Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism, and are told another six are on the way. That’s three times more entries than last year.
Continue Reading Add comment February 21st, 2010
A UCT student has been arrested, had his house searched and been questioned about his political affiliations after gesturing at President Jacob Zuma’s convoy of vehicles, IOL reports. Remember this incident, because if the blue-light brigade are not pulled up for it, we will recall it as a turning point in freedom of expression and democracy.
Continue Reading Add comment February 17th, 2010
Are our editors giving up the fight for a journalism of quality and credibility?
Continue Reading Add comment February 17th, 2010
A few years ago, the Citizen newspaper made a big story out of remarks by commentator Max du Preez that then-president Thabo Mbeki was a womanizer. The president’s hired gun, Essop Pahad, intervened and the paper was made to climb down quickly.
Continue Reading 5 comments February 12th, 2010
A little over a year ago, award-winning British reporter Nick Davies turned his investigative skills on his colleagues in the media and produced a book called Flat Earth News. It shook up British journalism.
Continue Reading 1 comment February 12th, 2010
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.
