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
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
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
I also had a bad experience of lazy journalism from a leading national business publication this week - one from whom I have come to expect higher standards.
Continue Reading 2 comments January 25th, 2010
Two adverts caught my eye: Sunday Time’s giant front pages on buildings across Joburg and a mysterious bottle of whisky in the middle of a page in The Times.
Continue Reading 2 comments November 27th, 2009
Probing behind the Nasper’s results shows some interesting things: how bad things are in newspapers, how our TV market is changing quietly, and just how big and powerful Naspers is.
Continue Reading 2 comments November 27th, 2009
Last week’s newspaper circulation figures indicate that we may have joined the many countries seeing a rapid decline of the industry. Only one daily and one Sunday newspaper were the exception as sales plunged. Usually there are some that go up and some down, but this time it plummeted across the board.
Continue Reading 1 comment November 25th, 2009
It is a sad day when any newspaper closes, and the Weekender, whose last edition came today, was a paper that had enriched my Saturday reading considerably and had found a definite place in my home. There are two questions one must ask: why did it fail, and does this mean there is no place for such a serious newspaper in this big city of ours?
Continue Reading 2 comments November 7th, 2009
Sundays could become interesting again, at least for those of us who like our weekend newspapers. There is nothing like an infusion of new energy into the Sunday newspaper market, and hints of a circulation battle, to liven things up.
Continue Reading Add comment October 31st, 2009
Oh my gosh, the Sunday Independent has what looks like it might be a full-time editor. What accounts for this sudden lavish spending by the Independent group?
Continue Reading 3 comments September 22nd, 2009
Business Day editor Peter Bruce had a go in his column on Monday at the head of First National Bank for suggesting to his staff that they should stop their newspaper subscriptions - costing over R1-m a year - and read it all online. Bruce was being - I am afraid - struthious.
Continue Reading 3 comments September 18th, 2009
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.
