South African newspaper editors came home from Moscow last year all fired up to take their online editions more seriously. They had been delegates to the World Newspaper Congress and become enthused by colleagues from developed countries who could talk about little else.
Early next month, the same international press event will take place in Cape Town. It’s the first time Africa will host the annual get-together of the 60-year-old World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and its younger offshoot, the World Editors’ Forum.
The question this time is whether Western press people will go home equally fired up by their encounter with African editors. It’s very easy to do cushy conferencing in Cape Town and overlook that you’re in the world’s most troubled continent.
More than 1 500 editors, owners and managers will be at the event, mostly coming from Europe and the United States. Understandably, the congress theme — Quality Journalism in the Digital Age — reflects the concerns of this majority.
From an African point of view, one could as well amend this to read Quality Journalism in the Digital Divide. The difference highlights which agenda will play at the congress — the Western future or the African present?
To its credit, WAN does have a history of sensitivity to African press issues. In the apartheid era, the organisation (at the time known by its French acronym FIEJ) refused affiliation by the lily-white South African Newspaper Press Union.
Then, during the transition times of the early 1990s, the organisation eased tensions between the mainstream Conference of Editors and the alternative Conference of Independent Editors (CIE).
The CIE included people like myself, Anton Harber, Max du Preez and Zwelakhe Sisulu, all editors of resistance papers. WAN got the two sides talking — a dialogue that would eventually culminate in the founding of the unified South African National Editors’ Forum in 1996.
Over the years, WAN has also protested against press repression around Africa and given its Golden Pen of Freedom award to brave editors such as Cameroonian Pius Njawe and South African Tony Heard. It further runs RAP-21, a helpful website that networks editors and publishers across Africa.
This year, thanks to some support from WAN (plus Absa and 2010), about 60 African editors will be in Cape Town, plus another 40 from South Africa in particular.
President Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma are on the speaker line-ups. They can expect hard questions — not least from the African contingent. Like: Why is Mbeki so soft on Zimbabwe’s media repression, and why is Zuma suing South African papers and cartoonist Zapiro for millions?
All this African presence this may focus Western delegates’ attention on the challenges — and achievements — in successful newspaper journalism on this continent. There will probably be a declaration on global support for African press freedom and development.
On the other hand, attention will also be on the tribulations facing the industry in developed-world environments. For instance, how newspapers there can make money from online publishing, and how to integrate newsrooms better to this end.
There are also sessions dealing with free editions, now a major trend in the West, and about how to produce several newspaper products out of a single newsroom.
Reflecting the extreme end is a talk on digital gaming for newspaper websites, as well as input by Adam Pasick, a Reuters ”virtual journalist” who runs a news bureau in Second Life, an online universe claiming to have six million members.
This virtual reality world is radically remote from the fortunes of physical newspapers in Africa, where a fantasy is often having enough electricity and elbow room to publish a paper effectively.
The WAN congress coincides with 150 stormy years since South Africa first began publishing a daily paper in the form of the Cape Argus. Local editors, fresh from fighting off the latest threat in the form of the Film and Publications Amendment Bill, will be mindful of the African agenda.
All this means that Western delegates have a chance to learn a lot about African newspaper issues while in Cape Town. Whether they will depends on their readiness to lift their eyes from the digital drawcards.
It also hinges on whether the African delegation can provide a focus that is equally mesmerising. Else, the conference might as well be on the French Riviera.
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