Kevin Bloom

To coincide with National Woman’s Day, <i>The Media</i> magazine celebrates the remarkable women chosen as South Africa’s "top 10 women in media" for the last year. Each woman listed has made an outstanding contribution to the development of the media industry in an economic, political, social or cultural sense, and each has therefore easily fulfilled the criterion for inclusion.

The South African conflict journalists covered in the lead story of <i>The Media</i> may not necessarily subscribe to war correspondent Martin Bell’s brand of advocacy journalism — one wouldn’t want to slap a category on them without their consent — but it’s plain that they all "care" and "know".

"People don’t want a war unless you absolutely have to have one, but the media would not present the possibility that there were alternatives — so therefore we went to war very much in the manner of a totalitarian society." That’s Noam Chomsky, responding to questions about the media’s role in the first Gulf War. CNN boss Chris Cramer assures Kevin Bloom that the network has no pro-American agenda.

"I’ve just been paid R15,000 for dressing up in a black tie and having dinner with a few hundred people". Nice work if you can get it. David Bullard does the math on his personal upside for not writing-that is, being paid for standing behind a microphone on a podium.

What does Akrikaans media say about contemporary Afrikaans culture? The question serves as the point of departure for the June issue lead writers, and the answers are nothing if not thought provoking.

An investment of R10&nbsp;000 in M-Net shares in 1993 would have fetched just under R150&nbsp;000 last year, or so the <i>Sunday Times</i> has noted. Can M-Net sustain its growth path? The station’s CEO, Glen Marques, speaks
to Kevin Bloom about the challenges facing the company.

The May issue lead article is the first in-depth interview for a South African audience with Gavin O’Reilly, Independent News & Media’s heir apparent. It’s a story we’ve been trying to secure for a while, and not just because the Independent group represents this country’s most direct exposure to the operational mindset of a foreign media behemoth.

Gavin O’Reilly is heir apparent to a media empire that operates 175 newspapers across England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In his first in-depth interview for a South African audience, he answers some tough questions about Independent News & Media’s cost-cutting imperatives. What’s the effect on local journalism? Kevin Bloom reports.

“A politician doesn’t want to mess too much with the media beast, because his success or failure depends on how the beast treats him. But he also knows that the electorate expects him to occasionally go up and smack the beast, then beat his chest. The beast goes ‘oooh, ohhh,’ then looks at him and winks.”

It’s not an all-out war yet, but the fight for readers and revenue in the women’s magazine space has escalated into a pretty hostile conflict. The catalyst is the entry of <i>Glamour</i>, launched out of the Conde Nast Independent Magazines stable in March. This is a sector where circulation of the top titles is dipping, so incumbent publishers are hitting back with venom.

Minister of Communications Dr. Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri does not engage with the press. Does her silence say something about her views on Zimbabwean media repression, the ANC’s alleged attempt to control the SABC, and the concept of public broadcasting in general? Kevin Bloom reports.

Beginning life as a suggestion of the Task Group on Government Communications (Comtask) in 1996, the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) has inspired its share of cynical comment — and not just because it took more than seven years for Comtask’s idea to be implemented. The cynics have another argument: there have been similar initiatives in the past, and they have failed.

Whether the news bosses admit it or not, the public can still see the egg on their faces from that week in January. Except for one television station, media were united by their brazen ignorance of rape case sensitivities. Kevin Bloom reports.

When a magazine publishes a top 10 list it’s a given that some readers will get annoyed. Some may even express their annoyance in a letter. We’ll justify our list as best we can, fully acknowledging your right to get annoyed.

If aggregate newspaper purchases are any barometer of a country’s literacy levels — and they sometimes are — there may be grounds for cautious optimism in South Africa. The latest circulation and readership figures show more people are buying newspapers than ever before.

TV Africa’s application for liquidation signaled the end of a US$57 million vision for a pan-African television network. Although funded in part by the World Bank’s IFC, the business model was fatally flawed. Kevin Bloom reports.

Yearly retrospectives, when placed on the news value ladder, generally fall somewhere below the “dog bites man” wrung – not even close to newsworthy. They can also be a bit dodgy on interest quotient – has anyone ever got past page 2 of <i>The Economist</i> “Year in Review” supplement? So one can guess that the form’s popularity is more a function of the year-end fatigue of editorial departments than a response to bags of beseeching readers’ letters.

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.

The Anti-Terrorism Bill has been passed under a new name and will probably become law before the end of 2003. Karen Willenberg expands on a potentially hazardous legislative process that has been ignored by the media.

"Aids journalism should do what any good journalism does," said United States reporter Mark Schoofs, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for an eight-part <i>Village Voice</i> series on Aids in Africa. "That is, reveal misdeeds by the powerful." <i>The Media</i> editor Kevin Bloom casts a critical eye on the reporting of HIv/Aids in South African media.

Jimi Matthews, head of television news at the SABC, has one of the most impressive CVs a journalist could wish for. Pity he supports Orlando Pirates. Kevin Bloom crosses swords.

"We might end up like the boxing fraternity," said Joel Netshitenzhe, CEO of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), announcing the latest addition to an outsized list of journalism awards. "If your boxer cannot win the WBC title, then establish the WBA or IBO."

Kickbacks, often in the form of all-expenses-paid overseas trips, have a long and endemic history in the media planning business. Recently the Advertising Media Forum (AMF), the body representing the interests of local media planning and buying agencies, forcefully restated its intention to correct this history.

At the recent Pica Magazine Awards, if you listened carefully, you could hear the hollow thud of standards dropping to the floor. Set up 34 years ago by the forebears of the Magazine Publishers Association of South Africa (MPASA) to acknowledge and promote excellence in local publishing, the annual event has become a "homage to mediocrity".

Despite cries of ‘trial by media’ and the refusal of editors and journalists to reveal their sources in front of presidential commissions, there is no media mogul or media house making our government dance to silly tunes.

In what may or may not be his last word on the issue, David Bullard says hatred had nothing to do with his pursuit of Darrel Bristow-Bovey. Of course, they’re not best friends either.

Last Monday listed financial content provider Moneyweb Holdings released interim results that must have made larger media groups salivate. With the six months to September 2003 showing growth of 747% in operating income and 490% in pre-tax profit against the same period last year, the lesson is you don’t need to own the media channels to do well.

Teen girl magazines do not aspire to journalism’s cutting edge. They focus on celebrity fluff, feel-good features and fashion, beauty and boyfriend advice, an editorial strategy that locks up one of the most profitable niches in international publishing. But last week’s launch of the local version of <i>Seventeen</i>, reawakens old concerns about the formula’s local potential.

With more than 400 newspapers and magazines fighting over the print sector’s R4,7-billion annual advertising pot, according to AC Nielsen’s AdEx, many South African publishers see Africa as a source of growth.

The week before last the SABC announced that its 13 public broadcasting services (PBS) radio stations would be "rejuvenated" as part of a strategy aimed at raising the brands’ profile among listeners and clients. The strategy calls attention to the repeated complaints of private broadcasters that the SABC enjoys mono-polistic bargaining powers.

An astute media professor, confronted with the apathy of his first-year journalism class, throws a question into the lecture hall. “Do the media reflect or represent society?” he asks. The class’s interest is piqued when the good professor explains why anyone should care.