Do women have a future in the newsrooms, or should they simply resign themselves to playing second fiddle? Lack of experience in editing and managing a newspaper hasn’t stood in the way of the appointment of males as editors. Bongiwe Mlangeni looks at gender politics on South Africa’s newspapers.
The dismissal of Mathatha Tsedu as editor of the <i>Sunday Times</i> raises questions not just about transformation of the media, but about transformation of South African society. The two are interlinked, because the media is its own social institution as much as it has an institutional role which impacts on all other social institutions, writes Tawana Kupe.
While unapproved signs and restrictive bylaws are giving many an outdoor media owner a mother of a migraine, operators remain confident about the future of the billboard industry. Megan Chronis reports.
It’s billed as the most measurable medium in the world, yet ironically, for a long time Internet measurement in South Africa has been in somewhat of a flux. Although online’s major selling point is its ability to closely monitor user behaviour, industry in-fighting has tainted the authority of local stats. A new body is about to change all that, writes Matthew Buckland.
It should be the mantra of the money media: No anarchists please, we’re business writers. Financial journalism is about money, stupid, not about people with no money! Graeme Addison sets out to raise the hackles of the financial press.
The uptake of customised marketing packages favours electronic media, says Harry Herber. Which is one reason television will grab the big revenue in 2004. Television, where adflation is minimal, is very buoyant and has huge scope.
"On a recent visit to South Africa, I was accosted by a fellow columnist who demanded to know why the American media have not mounted a more forceful challenge to the radical policies of the Bush administration". How broken is the US administration’s media smokescreen? Tim Spira thinks President Bush should start reading his nation’s newspapers.
Leading ANC intellectual and former Minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting in Mandela’s cabinet, Dr. Z. Pallo Jordan, evaluates local media ten years into democracy. Have free market principles delivered the goods? Has the SABC overcome its apartheid legacy? Are we adequately reflecting the two nations in our one country?
For a variety of ideological reasons, it’s not good form to give over the writing of one’s lead story to a member of parliament from the ruling party. Unless, of course, that parliamentarian’s autonomy of mind is substantiated more by documented history than subjective rhetoric.
"My attention was drawn to a rather feeble piece of invective that appeared in a recent <i>Finance Week</i>’s Piker column. It suggested that I was in no position to mount an ethical high horse concerning the behaviour of other journalists because my own reputation was severely blemished." There’s not much David Bullard can do about the attacks on his integrity — except maybe use his own space to hit back.