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/ 11 February 2004
2003 saw South African media heap a ton of dirt on its role as a credible and impartial informer. Kevin Bloom looks back on the personalities and events that were the most nauseating examples of how not to do it.
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/ 15 October 2003
Media 24, Naspers’s print arm, has launched an assault on rival Independent Newspapers’s dominance of the Durban newspaper market. Under the title <i>Weekend Witness</i>, the Pietermaritzburg-based <i>Natal Witness</i> has introduced a Saturday paper aimed at Durban, the coast and inland KwaZulu-Natal.
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/ 13 October 2003
ThisDay is on an aggressive mission to redefine South Africas newspaper market. Will the Nigerian-backed title leave local conglomerates wondering why they didnt grab the opportunity, or will the homeboys have the last laugh?Kevin Bloom reports.
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/ 13 October 2003
”I can resist everything except temptation,” Oscar Wilde once said. It’s arguably the master’s most repeated witticism, mainly because it’s a handy way of telling people you’re about to do something you shouldn’t, like gloat immoderately about your magazine’s content in the editor’s column.
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/ 11 September 2003
While the fifth "dummy edition" of <i>ThisDay</i>, SA’s long-awaited upmarket daily newspaper, has generated a great deal of nods of approval regarding its editorial range, story treatment and design elements, there are serious misgivings about the business model.
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/ 3 September 2003
Despite two recent parliamentary hearings on racism in advertising, new research confirms that "white" media continue to garner a disproportionate share of South Africa’s advertising revenue. The implication is that sustained inequality in spend prevents local media from painting a more realistic and inclusive picture of South African society.
Media diversity and its inherent role in ensuring the right to freedom of expression stands a better chance of surviving in South Africa than in the United States, according to <i>The Media’s</i>’s Kevin Bloom.
Whoever wins in the bid for the New Africa Investments Limited (Nail) assets, consolidation of the media sector looks imminent, writes <i>Media Weekly</i>’s Kevin Bloom.
Despite numerous appeals for his resignation, Thami Mazwai remains a board member and news sub-committee chief at the SABC. Yet the status quo remains, observes Kevin Bloom, appearing to suit a particular end.
A likely consequence of the Darrel Bristow-Bovey debacle is that lawyers will become involved. While nothing has yet been heard from Random House’s legal team on Bristow-Bovey’s "adaptation" of passages from Bill Bryson’s <i>Notes From a Big Country</i> in <i>The Naked Bachelor</i>, Zebra Press appears to be warming up for the courts.