I am ‘movie freak’

I love movies!
To illustrate: when I was in high school, I rented the movie While You Were Sleeping (I was a huge Sandra Bullock fan!) so many times that the movie shop eventually gave it to me!
There’s just something about that big silver screen, the popcorn (yummy cheese flavour, thank you!) and getting all emotional [...]

Proposal for Online Journalism Feature Package:

“A BURNING ISSUE: Online coverage of the xenophobic attacks in South Africa”
 
Few people will ever forget the images, in the press and on tv, of refugees burnt alive during the spate of xenophobic attacks in South Africa. These images may have ended up at the bottom of the bird cage with the newspaper or may [...]

Summary 5: Briggs, M. (2007). “Chapter 6: How to Report News for the Web”. In Journalism 2.0. How to Survive and Thrive.

Journalists don’t need special skills to write for the web, they just need mind-shift.
Writing for the web is like wire service reporting – it should happen in ‘takes’, where you provide more and more information as you get it. “It’s more in keeping with the broadcast model and less on the print model”. As your [...]

Can we question The Star’s xenophobic rescue campaign?

On Tuesday The Star (www.thestar.co.za) launched a campaign called Operation Reach Out to help the thousands of displaced victims of the recent violent xenophobic attacks. The Star, owned by the Independent Newspaper Group, put in R250 000 in funds to start the campaign. Today it reports that the campaign is doing well, with Vodacom pitching in R400 000.
Now, I have [...]

Online journalism: what does the future hold?

There has been much speculation over the future of online journalism. What I found from several readings, however, is that the general notion seems to be focused on how the evolution of online journalism impacts on traditional mass communications mediums (print, television, radio) and less on online journalism itself.
 
This is not without justification, however. 
 
The [...]

Summary 4: Matheson, D. (2004). Weblogs and the epistemology of the news: Some trends in online journalism

In this article, the author analyses news blogging on the website of the Guardian in Brittan (www.guardian.co.uk/blog), focusing on the relationship between the blogs on this site and its impact on the practice of journalism (impact on the communicative process and social context).
 
Matheson quotes Katherine Fulton as describing the online environment as “a challenge
to the [...]

Summary 3: Gillmor, D. (2004). “The Gates Come Down” in We the Media.

Blogs, citizen journalism and discussion forums on social networking sites (like Facebook) often have the power to put issues from the public agenda onto the media agenda, even if the media didn’t first pick it up. So where issues have been perhaps ignored by the mainstream media, the web has become a platform for the [...]

Summary 2: Briggs, M. (2007). “Chapter 5: How to Blog: in Journalism 2.0. How to Survive and Thrive

Basic principles, similar to making good news stories, can be applied to making a successful blog.
Many analysts have argued that every journo should have a blog, allowing the reporter direct access to his readers, allowing them a relationship where readers can give direct and immediate feedback.
“A good blog helps a blogger/reporter enhance his or her [...]

Summary 1: Lehman-Wilzig, S. and Cohen-Avigdor, N. (2004). The natural life cycle of new media evolution.

The authors compare new media communication with a living being that follows a six-stage, natural life cycle of evolution.
The six stages are:
1. Birth (technological invention)
2. Penetration
3. Growth
4. Maturity
5. Self-defence
6. Adaptation/convergence/obsolescence
The model relates to how much time it takes to diffuse and adopt new media and how many ‘adopters’ exist at each stage. They also suggest [...]

Xenophobic violence in South Africa

For the past two weeks, South Africa has been plagued by violent xenophobic attacks that has seen thousands of foreigners displaced, over 30 people killed and over 1000 people arrested. Most of these attacks have been taking place on the East Rand, the area I cover for Beeld (check out www.beeld.com and search Gloria Edwards [...]