by Gill Moodie. The release of the Amps figures for 2013 shows a picture of general stability for media. There was no significant change in any individual newspaper while the same was true for most magazine titles (Drum, Bona and Kuier were all up). TV was similarly stable while both DStv and community TV (particularly Soweto TV, Bay TV and 1KZNTV) were up significantly.
Tag archives: gill moodie
Live from Qunu – reporting from the funeral of Nelson Mandela
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) Three journalists: all East Londoners and deeply connected to the Daily Dispatch, the hometown newspaper of Nelson Mandela. All three covered THE once-in-a-lifetime story: the funeral of Mandela in Qunu in the Transkei last year but with totally different world views and media experience.
Grubstreet: Developing the Eyewitness News app
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) What should you be thinking about when you’re looking at a news app for mobile? Should the primary concern be simplicity and ease of use or should it have plenty of bells and whistles? It this about design or it chiefly about development?
Grubstreet: Many agendas in City Press race row
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) What’s eating City Press so much that its annual editorial strategy meeting last week blew up into a race row that exploded on Twitter and into the mainstream media after an extraordinary email by editor Ferial Haffajee to staff was leaked to The Media Online?
Grubstreet: Social Media Landscape 2014 study
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) Social networking is truly on the rise in South Africa, the recent “Social Media Landscape 2014” study tells us, and the top brands of South Africa are intensifying their social-media activity.
Grubstreet: The media and Joost: “We don’t always get it right”
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) It must surely be South Africa’s longest-running celebrity story: Joost van der Westhuizen and the great highs and lows of his extraordinary life.
Back in the news again recently with an exposé of his “healer” and news that he is fighting to stop the publication of a book by former Rapport celebrity reporter Gavin Prins about his life, Van der Westhuizen has fascinated the South African public for more than decade – and certainly helped the sales of magazines such as Huisgenoot and Afrikaans papers such as Rapport.
Grubstreet: Getaway — we won’t bamboozle you like Google
by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) RamsayMedia’s Getaway is updating its ethos to reflect a more sophisticated view of travel among the South Africa’s growing middle class – a move that the magazine’s editor, Cameron Ewart-Smith, describes as “a fundamental shift in the very fabric of our magazine”.
This also means that the iconic outdoor adventurer’s magazine that was launched in 1989 has been redesigned. You’ll see the changes in the October 2013 edition that is already available in store. They include a glossy, more sophisticated cover, bolder use of typography and pictures, more graphics and a brighter palette of colours.
Ewart-Smith told Grubstreet last week: “(The change) was borne out of looking at South African travellers and realising there is a much more diverse community of travellers than waspy, (national) park-going traditional Getaway readers.
Grubstreet: The future of broadcasting is authenticity – Given Mkhari
by Gill Moodie. Broadcasting from Polokwane in the far north of the country, Capricorn FM is a model for how a radio station can succeed in a secondary economy.
Grubstreet: New-look Financial Mail
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) BDFM’s Financial Mail is getting a brand new look this week and Grubstreet had a sneak peek at the long overdue revamp.
KZN’s Vuma FM: breaking new ground for vernacular media
by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) Of the three new FM stations to hit the air waves in the past year, Vuma 103 FM in KwaZulu-Natal is the least talked about in media circles – and yet in many ways, it is the most interesting.
Both Smile FM in Cape Town and the Johannesburg-based Power FM got a lot of buzz when they launched (in March and June respectively) but Vuma FM has been on the air since November last year, quietly gaining audience. According to the latest RAMS figures from the South African Audience Research Foundation, out last week, Vuma FM was at 93 000 listeners (past seven days) – and that was only its urban audience.
Based in Durban but reaching most of KwaZulu-Natal, the station goes out in 90% isiZulu with 70% music – most of which is gospel and also more broadly inspirational.
Owned by KNI, a consortium led by Revered Abe Sibiya who also heads the One Gospel satellite TV station, Vuma is unusual in the South African media landscape because it is a vernacular product that targets upper LSM groups.
Most vernacular media offerings, such as the very successful Isolezwe newspaper, target the lower LSMs.