“Listening shapes culture locally and universally.” -Pauline Oliveros
Charles Lee Mathews
Writer who likes to draw.
Posted inGeneral
Web unleashes news beast
In a multi-platform world where the news waits for no man or network, traditional media would do well to heed the call of the Beowulf that would consume them. When long time host of NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Tim Russert, collapsed and died in the network’s Washington Bureau a couple of months ago, NBC tried […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Journalism’s end game
“South African’s should be worried. Without an aggressively free press your whole democratic system collapses. If you don’t have a democratic system informing society, people will elect leaders the enmities. Zimbabwe placed no limit on advertising, the only limit was on editorial comment. When you do that you land up with a completely stuffed up economy.” – Martin Weltz, Publisher, Noseweek.
Posted inGeneral
Community commerce
Don’t you love a creative business idea whose time has come? One that rewards local ingenuity, funky design and distributes wealth to smart people who are innovative and contribute to a community business model? Springleap is an idea whose time has come and it’s great to see that this is being recognized by The Industry […]
Posted inGeneral
Censorship, media and the power of perception
Context is a hell of a thing. That point was driven home to me today when Muti deleted a link without explaining how or why the post was deleted. A social book making site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa, Muti evolved out […]
Posted inGeneral
Rafiq Phillips: The wired wonder
Legend has it that Rafiq Phillips was born online. A self-styled search-engine and online marketing guru, Rafiq has been in the internet industry almost since it existed in South Africa. Known to his friends as Rafiki the web addict, he cannot survive daily life without Muti.co.za, Wikipedia, TED.com and an arsenal of Google products. When […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
The pornography of violence
When does news become the glorification or pornography of violence?
Posted inLifestyle
A stroke of genius
In November last year I had a mild stroke. You may think of this as a stroke of bad luck, but for me it has been the most incredible experience — both in the minute space of time that it happened, and for what it has meant to me afterwards. We’ve all heard the old […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Values and the price of capitalism
The recent release of Naspers’ results was marred by a reputation scandal after it was revealed that Paarl Web, a subsidiary of the Cape Town based multinational media company, printed Zanu-PF pamphlets for the Mugabe regime. Read Naspers and the trail of Mugabe’s blood money as well as Mugabe’s man unmasked on MoneyWeb for background. […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Who owns your mind?
I go face to face with Wadim Schreiner for the inside scoop on agenda setting and the battle for control of your brain. Schreiner is a specialist media analyst and the MD of Media Tenor South Africa and partner in Media Tenor International (Switzerland). He decodes and analyses media trends and interprets the media agenda […]
Posted inGeneral
The white boy’s club
“No economy can grow by excluding any part of its people, and an economy that is not growing cannot integrate all of its citizens in a meaningful way.” – from South Africa’s black economic empowerment strategy document. At the end of May I started writing about new media for ITWeb and thought my first story […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Racism, Rock and ruling
“You know how hard it is to make racism just plain fun? Rock does it. Racism to Chris Rock is just a Hacky Sack on his foot. He kicks it up over here, over there, behind the back and then right over to you. The tension release he offers is available nowhere else, from no one else.” Jerry Seinfeld on Chris Rock, currently touring South Africa.