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
When newspapers are in trouble, journalism is in trouble. And this week has not been a good week for American newspapers. One of their worst, in fact. And it raises the question of whether current global conditions are going to deliver a knockout blow to an already punch-drunk industry in America.
Continue Reading Add comment October 31st, 2008
I waited anxiously this weekend to see how the Sunday Times would follow up their dramatic Transnet story of the previous week. And they wrote … nothing. Not a mention. Not a hint. Not a peep.
Continue Reading Add comment October 31st, 2008
What response would you expect when a leading newspaper accuses a sitting president of taking money from arms dealers, as the Sunday Times did to Thabo Mbeki this weekend? I could think of two possible responses: to admit it and step down, or to issue a forceful pledge to force the newspaper to retract and apologise.
Continue Reading Add comment October 31st, 2008
The Times this morning leaks an ANC document outlining its ideas to acquire or launch a national daily newspaper before the elections in April next year. It makes for intriguing reading, especially as one is left wondering if these are loose ideas, plans or just plain fantasies.
Continue Reading 3 comments July 11th, 2008
Pallo Jordan, now head of ANC communications, says that a media tribunal is justified because of the Daily Sun. I have a challenge for him.
Continue Reading 2 comments July 6th, 2008
The Mail & Guardian, in an article today on politicians claiming they were quoted out of context, had me pronouncing this inanity: “Being quoted out of context usually means that the person is quoted in a context they don’t want to be quoted in.” Let me tell you what I remember saying.
Continue Reading 1 comment June 27th, 2008
When I opened the Sunday Times last week and read David Bullard’s column, the question I asked myself was this: “How on earth did this get into the newspaper? How did this get past the Sunday Times editors?
Continue Reading 6 comments April 17th, 2008
There is a billionaires’ battle going on in Ireland likely to have repercussions for our local media. Tony O’Reilly is facing a serious challenge for control of Independent News and Media from another Irish billionaire, telecoms mogul Denis O’Brien.
Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 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)
