by Carey Finn. The editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian believes that it is up to journalists to secure the future of democracy.
Tag archives: journalism
Grubstreet: Trolls, hate speech & robust debate
by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) Online comments – and how they can veer off into bigoted nastiness and hate speech – are in the spotlight after Dr Iqbal Survé, the owner of Independent Newspapers, weighed in on comments on a column on his company’s news portal , IOL, that became aggressive and racist.
Ads and media tweets
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Not an awful lot seems to have been written about sponsored tweets making their way into the Twitter feeds of media organisations or journalists until a mini blowout early last year.
How Twitter challenged the illusion of journalistic omniscience
by John Jewell, Cardiff University. Twitter values itself at US$12 billion and expects to raise up to US$1.3 billion in sales. But let’s forget about the money and think about Twitter’s impact in its relatively short lifetime of seven years.
How the Eskom-Billiton pricing discount story was exposed
by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) One cannot overestimate the significance of Sake24’s recent PAIA win in the Bloemfontein Supreme Court of Appeal that forced mining giant BHP Billiton to reveal how much of a power discount it was getting from Eskom for two of its aluminium smelters.
This was a long court battle – almost four years’ long – and the outcome sends out a strong message that if a journalist – or a member of the public – requests information involving the state and a third party, the request cannot simply be refused on the grounds that the third party can expect some measure of privacy.
“The ruling shows that the public’s right to access information can trump commercial secrets,” media attorney Willem de Klerk, who represented Sake24 in the bid, told Grubstreet last week. “It shows that large corporations doing business with state entities may expect their commercial dealings to be placed under the spotlight.
TechCentral readership climbs to 133 000
TechCentral, launched in September 2009 by IT journalist Duncan McLeod, has shown steady growth, averaging between 250 000 and 300 000 impressions a month. It has also been profitable from day one thanks to a lean structure put in place by McLeod, who manages the site with one other full time journalist, Craig Wilson, and with Lance Harris in charge of lighter content over the weekends.
A string of freelancers make up the rest of the team. McLeod handles sales himself.
McLeod had been at the Financial Mail for twelve years before he jumped ship, and served as technology editor at the time that he left the publication, to which he still contributes a weekly column. Having seen the decline of print in the US, especially on the newspaper front, and seeing the rise in connectivity in South Africa and the relatively low barriers of entry into online publishing, he made the leap and launched TechCentral.
Sunday Times issues statement on alleged police smear
Sunday Times issues statement on alleged police smear
Live from SA – the youth have their say
Live SA is a new youth publication published out of Cape Town. There’s the usual stuff on love, YouTube, being brave and following your heart, should you get that body piercing, music, freedom and fashion – and then maybe the less usual stuff, about falling out of the closet aged 16, what to do when your countrymen’s infamous xenophobia breaks down the lives of friends, of falling in love with gangster boys and having Miss Khayelitsha pose in front of the backend of a construction truck…
Social media use in journalism still evolving, as new award shows
The Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards is among the most prestigious and richest in the country. The awards, now celebrating its 10th year, rewards outstanding reporting and excellence in journalism, with the overall winner walking away with R125 000 in prize money.
The Vodacom awards have various categories by media such as print, radio, television and by niches such as sport, financial/economic reporting, consumer journalism etc.
Wine mag bets service content will pay when journalism didn’t
Wine magazine, the wine-focused consumer monthly published by RamsayMedia, will be publishing its last edition in September 2011, after nearly 20 years in print. The magazine has only turned an annual profit three times in its existence.
RamsayMedia MD Stuart Lowe says the group had been considering for many years now what to do about Wine magazine. For years it has been building a series of conciliary activities to extend the Wine brand, including books, wine tastings and expos. All these businesses made money, but never enough to offset the losses on the magazine side, says Lowe.