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
It was a newspaper that started the latest debate about blogs and blogging. Trevor Butterworth wrote eloquently in the Financial Times of the “dismal fate of blogging: it renders the word even more evanescent than journalism”. But the debate quickly moved to blogs. Blogs about blogs. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Blogs don’t replace conventional journalism, but they do add considerably to the discussion and debate that arises out of it.
Continue Reading Add comment February 19th, 2006
Johncom’s new website — www.reporter.co.za — highlights the potential and limitations of the new craze for citizen journalism.
Continue Reading 1 comment February 8th, 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.
