THESE are glorious days for journalism. We celebrate the end of the Rupert Murdoch era, in which he systematically degraded what we do and wielded a malign influence in London and Washington. His corruptive hold over the British establishment is broken, and this can only lead to a waning of his power and influence in the media world.
Continue Reading 1 comment July 15th, 2011
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 Add comment July 15th, 2011
WHY is Jimmy Manyi trying to steal my job? He is government spokesman, but from everything he says it is clear he really wants to be a media critic. That’s my job. Since he is trying to do my job, I will have a shot at thinking about what I would do if I had his.
Continue Reading Add comment June 23rd, 2011
Some of the reviews of my book …
Continue Reading 2 comments June 7th, 2011
We should be careful not to romanticize war photographers. Anyone who has spent time with a bunch of them will know that it is easy to glorify the mixture of courage and foolishness, the adrenalin addiction, the search for “bang-bang” that drives them. But we must never stop appreciating them, and what they do for us …
Continue Reading Add comment June 5th, 2011
Corina van der Spoel of Boekehuis sent me this pic with this note: Herewith a photo a friend took the other night at Diepsloot. These three guys turned up at their local only to find the launch in progress. Here they are caught in the act of looking at your book. They didn’t have money to buy it and soon after left, only to return with enough money between the three of them to buy one copy.
Continue Reading Add comment May 19th, 2011
I am proud to say that I believe this was the first book launch every covered by the Daily Sun. Here is the cutting …
Continue Reading 1 comment May 13th, 2011
After the momentous Polokwane conference (I said at the launch of my book Diepsloot), I wrote a column in Business Day asking why us journalists had got Zuma and the ANC so wrong. My conclusion was that we were focused on the edifices of power - parliament, Union Buildings and so on - and needed to examine the foundations …
Continue Reading Add comment May 13th, 2011
My book is out! Here is the blurb: In little more than a decade, Diepsloot has transformed from a semi-rural expanse to a dense, seething settlement of about 200 000 people.
Continue Reading 1 comment May 6th, 2011
Every year this time, a group of us sit down and study the best journalism of the year. We are judging the Taco Kuiper Award for Investigative Journalism, and it allows us a rare chance to focus on the top 5% of our reporting.
Continue Reading 1 comment April 17th, 2011
That crumpling sound you are hearing is the sound of knees jerking. It is the traditional soundtrack for much of our journalism, but it has been particularly loud in recent weeks on one particular story.
Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 2011
There are a lot of differences in media across Africa, and a wide range of media regulation systems in this big continent. But when media people from 21 African countries got together at Wits University last week, there were two things that brought swift consensus.
Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 2011
Ours is a vuvuzela democracy: noisy in a joyous and sometimes painful way, repeatedly testing our tolerance for unpleasant – even harmful – cacophony.
Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 2011
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
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)
