It has been a year of vigorous and healthy contestation. We have fought over the independence of the judiciary, the freedom of the media and the appropriateness of presidential appointments. We have seen combat in parliament, the courts, the streets, the ruling party, the biggest opposition party, the provinces, the cities, and even the cabinet. We have arm-wrestled over political power, policy, ideology, history, language and song lyrics.
Continue Reading January 7th, 2012
Branko Brkic is an editor’s dream and a publisher’s nightmare. He is a groundbreaker in South African publishing. He boldly starts new titles, usually with brilliant content, design and marketing, and charges in headfirst – with admirable courage and independence of spirit.
Continue Reading July 15th, 2011
The Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Most Dangerous Man in America”, could not be more timely. Released last year, it told the story of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and was charged with espionage – and puts in dramatic perspective the current row over Wikileak’s Julian Assange.
Continue Reading February 16th, 2011
Okay, it’s not so new, but it is becoming more prevalent - and it is certainly changing my reading habits. I am talking about curated sites - where smart people select and present information and articles from all over the web, and put them in an accessible form for people in a hurry to find good reads.
Continue Reading January 30th, 2011
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 July 14th, 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 April 27th, 2010
There is growing consensus that Apple’s sleek and elegant iPad represents the future of newspapers, magazines and books.
Continue Reading April 27th, 2010
In California, you can be your own virtual news editor, getting journalists to cover stories you think are important. If, that is, enough people agree with you that it is worth paying a few dollars for the story. Through the website www.spot.us, you can deal directly with journalists looking for work.
Continue Reading November 25th, 2009
Here are two interesting new forms of “collaborative” reporting, based on entirely new internet funding models: www.spot.us and www.demandmedia.com
Continue Reading November 2nd, 2009
Just as momentum is building around finding ways for news operations to charge for their information on the Web, one key thinker has said this is a waste of time. Chris Anderson, the respected editor of Wired, has published Free, which argues that - like the music - industry we have to accept that all information is fighting to be free on the internet, and one has to find other ways to make it pay.
Continue Reading July 20th, 2009
The Guardian, Agence France Presse, the Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, the Times and the Evening Standard all reported British foreign minister David Milliband’s unexpected Twitter tribute to Michael Jackson. “Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael,” it read.
Continue Reading July 8th, 2009
South African media companies are producing better-than-expected results, despite the downturn in advertising.
Continue Reading July 2nd, 2009
We gave money from our Taco Kuiper Fund at Wits U to the Daily Dispatch to investigate the spate of killings of Somalis in their region. The result is a great story, a powerful investigation, and imaginative and rich use of multimedia on their website. Have a look at Daily Dispatch.
Continue Reading March 14th, 2009
Previous Posts
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)
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)
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