What a pleasure to return from a six-month sabbatical and find that there have been two of the most exciting developments in our newspaper world in many years: the launch of a new newspaper, The New Age (TNA), and the launch of the Sunday Times isiZulu edition.
Continue Reading 3 comments January 2nd, 2011
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 2 comments 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
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)
