Posted inBusinessLifestyleMedia

Beware the oracle

Chris Moerdyk states in his News24 opinion column of May 7 2012 that the editor of the magazine Health Intelligence (Mr Colin Levin) agrees with him (in an editorial on page 1 of Edition 15 – May/June 2012) about the latest food labelling regulations going “too far in their noble intention to (protect) consumers from misleading […]

Posted inMedia

Press clubs are for public engagement, not political intolerance

Following the fracas after Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson refused to enter the room or speak at a Cape Town Press Club breakfast until an opposition MP had removed himself, there is suddenly talk of the press club being some kind of front “infiltrated” by opposition politicians. ANC national spokesperson Jackson Mthembu, the office of the […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

Dear Jessica: Thank you

Dear Jessica, I feel sorry for you. Really I do. You got up on Friday and tweeted that it would be a good day, without having any idea that by the end of it you’d have lost your sponsorship and your FHM title and been reported to the Human Rights Commission (HRC). So I’d like […]

Posted inLifestyleMedia

What’s your booze culture?

It’s Friday, the day on which – Phuza Thursday notwithstanding – many South Africans start drinking in earnest and, if some statistics are to be believed, don’t sober up until Monday morning rolls around. I was reminded the other night of how uncomfortable I feel around drunk people. Now I’m not talking pleasantly tanked and […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

Fighting the Good Fight?

By Christopher Clark Over the past year or so, the profession of journalism has been under heavy attack from different sides. Even before the Protection of State Information, or secrecy, Bill crept on all fours into the South African Parliament, there was trouble. In the UK, the News of the World‘s scandalous phone hacking of […]

Posted inGeneralMedia

Self-publish and be damned? Yeah, right

There have been a lot of comment pieces in the past couple of months about why self-publishing your own novel is a very bad thing. They’ve appeared in newspapers and on the kind of websites where the authors have their own photos and full biographies at the end of each article they write. Almost without […]

Posted inLifestyleMedia

Back in my day

Life was simpler in the 1970s. Those were the days when my mother dressed me in brown corduroy and made me eat Jungle Oats, and Maya the Bee was on TV. Things have changed since then. Yes, there is the obvious stuff like no apartheid and iPads and cars that can park themselves. But what […]

Posted inMedia

Why I loved Material — and you will too

I hate crying at the movies. Always have. For some reason, I feel deeply uncomfortable about showing emotion, even if nobody else can see it in the dark. And yet the first time I saw Material I cried. That’s the sign of a good movie: a story that can move the audience to laugh and […]

Posted inMediaNews/Politics

A letter to my Valentine

Weren’t expecting that one, were you? I’m the anti-love, anti-relationship cynic, right? Well, not quite. So here goes: Dear Valentine, To be honest, I wouldn’t say you’re the love of my life. I’ve known you were there, and I’ve known, theoretically, that you meant something to me. When others said you were gay or misguided, […]

Posted inMedia

What does LinkedIn have to do with nude yoga?

More than you’d expect, actually. I’ll state this right upfront: I love to hate the world’s largest business social network. The random, irrelevant contact requests from so-called “friends”. The dull, tiresomely self-promoting discussion topics. Half the people on it haven’t updated their profiles since the Rinderpest. Oh yes, and then there’s the fact that after […]