Newspapers have been in trouble for some time. But the current economic downturn, and the drop in advertising expenditure that came with it, have speeded things up dramatically.
Continue Reading 5 comments April 29th, 2009
Hierdie is ’n pleidooi aan Jacob Zuma: Gryp die oomblik van jou verkiesing en jou verheffing tot president aan om jou verhouding met die media op ’n nuwe grondslag te plaas. Jy kan nie, jy kan eenvoudig nié jou presi?dentskap begin deur redakteurs, koerante, skrywers en spotprentkunstenaars te dagvaar nie.
Continue Reading Add comment April 18th, 2009
This is a plea to Jacob Zuma: seize the moment of the election and your ascendancy to the presidency to put your relationship with the media on a new footing. You cannot, you simply cannot, begin your presidency suing editors, newspapers, writers and cartoonists.
Continue Reading 1 comment April 18th, 2009
Sitting on judging panels for journalism awards gives one valuable insight into the best of South African reporting. The Taco Kuiper Award, which gives out a whopping R200 000 for “a distinguished example of investigative journalism” will be handed out this week, and that has meant I have been poring through piles of material of some of the year’s most important stories.
Continue Reading 1 comment April 18th, 2009
Latest news is that Mail & Guardian staff have been warned that they will be told in two weeks who is going to be retrenched and who can stay. Attempts are being made to prevent this, but things look tough.
Continue Reading 3 comments March 25th, 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 Add comment March 14th, 2009
I was struck by how dignified and appropriate was the President’s response to the collapse of the story of his pregnant, young girlfriend. He chose his words carefully, and he chose them well. “I will drop a line to the Press Ombudsman,” he said.
Continue Reading Add comment February 10th, 2009
The Sowetan journalists are upset with me, perplexed at how I could have criticised their coverage of the President (”He sleeps alone, like a monk”) but defended the Star’s expose of the three women competing for his affections. Was I inconsistent?
Continue Reading 1 comment February 4th, 2009
I was disappointed that the Sunday Times did not publish the full version of the report of it’s Review Panel. There is material in it, I think, of use to all South African editors.
Continue Reading Add comment January 18th, 2009
Three weeks ago, I reported that the Independent group were planning to merge all their sub-editing rooms into one national subs room. This was confirmed today in a note from Star Editor-in-Chief Moegsien Williams which also said they were aiming to reduce their editorial staff by 23.
Continue Reading 1 comment December 4th, 2008
How rude can you be about your boss? In exchange for paying you a salary, can you employer expect you to give up your right to criticise them? That’s the question being raised as the fight for freedom of expression moves from the lofty corridors of power to the places of everyday life, such as the factory floor and the academy.
Continue Reading 1 comment December 4th, 2008
The quarter ABC figures for newspaper sales have just come out. Normally the newspapers trumpet it selectively and manipulatively (I think this is called spin doctoring: “We are up AGAIN, if you compare our sales to this time in 1983, particularly among our target market of left-handed intellectuals”). But this time there was largely silence. Wondering why?
Continue Reading 2 comments November 15th, 2008
Newspapers – and therefore journalism – will be changed forever by this economic downturn.
Continue Reading Add comment November 12th, 2008
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)
