Category: Journalism How to be a good journalist
What I learned at the MMX17 Conference
In mid-August I spent two days at the Menell Media Exchange Conference in Johannesburg. The meeting, organised by Duke University, aims “to create and support a sustainable and robust media community in South Africa and beyond, through programs, fellowships and conferences”. This year’s event was around the theme of Truth & Trust and is well-documented in stories, videos and podcasts by student journalists covering the event (Friday and Saturday), and I am not going to…
A must-read about what it means to be a journalist
When I was a full-time journalist, I kept an eye on news and views about my industry – and did more of that as the years wore on and it became apparent that my industry was in Big Trouble. Now that I am a freelancer and am able have a bit more of a flexible approach to how I use my working hours, I have a bunch of feeds I use to keep an eye…
Thoughts on web design: it begins with an article
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an editor in possession of a new website (or a newspaper) must be in want of a redesign. The Jane Austen phrasing was irresistible, but this is one of the true certainties of journalism: when a publication gets a new editor, he or she will want it to look different. When I was a print journalist I live through three different redesigns. And in my time in online…
How to curate content (aka be an editor)
The recent furore surrounding the publication of a hoax blog post at Huffington Post SA has had me thinking – about hate speech (which I wrote about here), and about the process by which decisions are made about publication or non-publication of a particular piece of writing. In years of experience at IOL, I had more unsolicited pieces of writing cross my email inbox than I care to think about now. Over time, I learned…
When is speech hateful – and when is it hate speech?
South African journalists (and perhaps some bemused bystanders) have been consumed for the last week or so by a chain of events centred on the country’s instance of the Huffington Post. In brief, this is what happened: Huff Post SA published a piece saying white men should be disenfranchised. This duly went viral. Then things got sticky. It transpired the piece had been written as a hoax by a white man trying to make a point about…
Why online headlines matter, a lot
Huffington Post South Africa engaged in an interesting but flawed experiment this week.They published a story with this headline: ‘Donald Trump Praises Jacob Zuma as “The Best, Ever”‘ . Very clickable it is, combining two big names in online traffic generation. However, what you get when you open the article is a discussion of fake news – a “we make you click and now we will teach you something” story. Huff Post’s news editor Deshnee Subramany…
How to be a good journalist
What I learned at the MMX17 Conference
In mid-August I spent two days at the Menell Media Exchange Conference in Johannesburg. The meeting, organised by Duke University, aims “to create and support a sustainable and robust media community in South Africa and beyond, through programs, fellowships and conferences”. This year’s event was around the theme of Truth & Trust and is well-documented in stories, videos and podcasts by student journalists covering the event (Friday and Saturday), and I am not going to…
A must-read about what it means to be a journalist
When I was a full-time journalist, I kept an eye on news and views about my industry – and did more of that as the years wore on and it became apparent that my industry was in Big Trouble. Now that I am a freelancer and am able have a bit more of a flexible approach to how I use my working hours, I have a bunch of feeds I use to keep an eye…
Thoughts on web design: it begins with an article
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an editor in possession of a new website (or a newspaper) must be in want of a redesign. The Jane Austen phrasing was irresistible, but this is one of the true certainties of journalism: when a publication gets a new editor, he or she will want it to look different. When I was a print journalist I live through three different redesigns. And in my time in online…
How to curate content (aka be an editor)
The recent furore surrounding the publication of a hoax blog post at Huffington Post SA has had me thinking – about hate speech (which I wrote about here), and about the process by which decisions are made about publication or non-publication of a particular piece of writing. In years of experience at IOL, I had more unsolicited pieces of writing cross my email inbox than I care to think about now. Over time, I learned…
When is speech hateful – and when is it hate speech?
South African journalists (and perhaps some bemused bystanders) have been consumed for the last week or so by a chain of events centred on the country’s instance of the Huffington Post. In brief, this is what happened: Huff Post SA published a piece saying white men should be disenfranchised. This duly went viral. Then things got sticky. It transpired the piece had been written as a hoax by a white man trying to make a point about…
Why online headlines matter, a lot
Huffington Post South Africa engaged in an interesting but flawed experiment this week.They published a story with this headline: ‘Donald Trump Praises Jacob Zuma as “The Best, Ever”‘ . Very clickable it is, combining two big names in online traffic generation. However, what you get when you open the article is a discussion of fake news – a “we make you click and now we will teach you something” story. Huff Post’s news editor Deshnee Subramany…