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.

Africa Dispatches: The US$19.9 billion media market

by Mandy de Waal (@mandyldewaal) Growth in media spend in Africa is outpacing the US and Western Europe, while media investments are alive, thanks to the politically connected or business people with big egos and pockets to match. [a Mark Magazine: Africa Dispatches feature]

The agency boss who wants to hit the reset button on media

by Herman Manson (@marklives) New MEC Cape Town MD John Beale thinks media agencies are in deep deep trouble, what with a dysfunctional revenue model and an old school obsession with traditional paid-for media, and that they will be toast in five to ten years if lots of things don’t drastically change — such as their business model, positioning and offering.

April 1: Punk’d by the media

by Herman Manson (@marklives) It’s 1 April 2014 and news sites, newspapers and broadcasters are out to get you. With elections just around the corner, April Fool’s stories dealt with popular voter gripes: News24 announced Western Cape premier Helen Zille is moving to Khayelitsha; MyBroadband tackled Nkandla’s ‘but I never asked for it’ telecommunications infrastructure; and TimesLive reported that you can dodge paying e-tolls by driving exactly 113 km/h.

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