In California, you can be your own virtual news editor, getting journalists to cover stories you think are important. If, that is, enough people agree with you that it is worth paying a few dollars for the story. Through the website www.spot.us, you can deal directly with journalists looking for work.
Continue Reading Add comment November 25th, 2009
Here are two interesting new forms of “collaborative” reporting, based on entirely new internet funding models: www.spot.us and www.demandmedia.com
Continue Reading Add comment November 2nd, 2009
Just as momentum is building around finding ways for news operations to charge for their information on the Web, one key thinker has said this is a waste of time. Chris Anderson, the respected editor of Wired, has published Free, which argues that - like the music - industry we have to accept that all information is fighting to be free on the internet, and one has to find other ways to make it pay.
Continue Reading Add comment July 20th, 2009
The Guardian, Agence France Presse, the Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, the Times and the Evening Standard all reported British foreign minister David Milliband’s unexpected Twitter tribute to Michael Jackson. “Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael,” it read.
Continue Reading Add comment July 8th, 2009
South African media companies are producing better-than-expected results, despite the downturn in advertising.
Continue Reading 3 comments July 2nd, 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
The Times takes a big step forward in the next few months, when it will be sold on the streets for the first time. This is a move likely to shake up the newspaper market significantly.
Continue Reading 3 comments January 8th, 2008
I have been silent on the Times, the daily paper for Sunday Times subscribers, because it is always too easy to criticise a new paper before it has time to find its feet. But I am ready to make some tentative observations.
Continue Reading 1 comment July 15th, 2007
YouTube has teamed up with CNN and Google to do their own US presidential debates later this year. Anyone will be able to post questions to the candidates via a YouTube video.
Continue Reading Add comment June 20th, 2007
It is an old Washington technique to distract attention from a breaking story by dumping huge amounts of documents on the media at awkard times, hoping journalists would drown in it, and miss the story. But the work of a website, which got dozens of people spread across the country to read and analyse a set of documents, meant that such a move backfired on the Bush White House. It is a fascinating tale of the power of the web.
Continue Reading Add comment March 21st, 2007
This story revolves around a mystery woman called Zeng. And it takes place in an online discussion group. It is a tale of how, even in virtual reality, when we can’t see skin colour or hear accents and everyone can hide behind nicknames, a person’s race can still shape how we view them and what they say.
Continue Reading 2 comments August 16th, 2006
If you want evidence of how much advertising is changing, look at the company Microsoft has just bought, called Massive.
Continue Reading 1 comment May 6th, 2006
You want to understand the impact of censorship? Nothing shows it more clearly than a comparison between the search results for images of Tiananmen Square on Google with the one you get on Google China. Nothing more need be said.
Continue Reading Add comment February 26th, 2006
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.
