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.
Continue Reading 1 comment March 14th, 2009
What do we mean by investigative journalism? Is all good journalism not investigative? I have been asked these questions many times this week, as we launched the Taco Kuiper Investigative Journalism Awards and Grants at Wits University.
Continue Reading 2 comments February 14th, 2007
Everywhere I look I seem to see a journalism training course. Some are long, some are short; some are done by experts, some by people who haven’t been in a newsroom for years; some are skills-based, others are there to promote an agenda, like the plight of refugees, or environmental issues. But there is no shortage, that’s for sure. Why, then are there still problems with journalism skills in our region? Where is all this training going?
Continue Reading 11 comments February 21st, 2006
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.
