Media

Possibly the most famous newspaper headline blunder was made by the Chicago Tribune of November 3 1948, which bannered “Dewey Defeats Truman”. When the decision to print the paper was made, returns from the US election were coming in very slowly and time was running out before the deadline for the edition. The Tribune staff, […]

To celebrate our latest long weekend, a pair of my favourite websites: * 1000 Tiny Things I Hate I’ve written about this blog before, but it just keeps getting funnier and funnier! British comedian Jon Brown details all the many things that irritate him, like today’s post: #0156. HIGHLY SPECIFIC INTERNET POLLS, AND THEIR LARGELY […]

(This post first appeared on tonylankester.com) Sometimes writing a blog entry is hard work. Occasionally, though, someone gives you material — an idea, a reference or image to work from — that is so rich, so ripe with possibility it makes you want to hurl yourself at the feet of the giver, weeping with gratitude. […]

“Admiring advertising for its creativity is a bit like admiring Nazism for its cool uniforms,” Chris McEvoy wrote recently, and even though I’ve worked in the ad industry for virtually my entire salaried career*, it’s awfully tempting to agree with him. “The advertising industry is a soulless vortex that sucks up all the creativity it […]

(Disclaimer: Excuse the language in this blog. I’m posting it from an internet café and I’m seated next to two giggly teenagers on Facebook) Apologies for going AWOL on you. I wrote my blogs as is our deal. Honest. But the dog ate my blog. Well, not that kind of dog. Let me explain. To […]

I recently had a look at Google Trends and noticed that jobs have now finally overtaken sex as the most searched term in South Africa. Google trends monitor what people search for on Google in South Africa. This information is displayed over time and provides an insight into current affairs. In the graph below, the […]

I think Jacob Zuma has a big future as a media super star. In fact, I think his presidency is going to be a sort of peak in term of the government’s relations with the media. It is a very natural development. Imagine yourself being a shareholder at one of the media monopolies where your […]

I am about to comprehensively lose confidence in the future of print media, especially newspapers, in South Africa. Worse, the major groups compound the problem by denying that not only are most of their black editors tokens but now confirming that they never appointed them on merit in the first place. The recent trend in […]

I’ve always believed in the power of advertising, not just to sell stuff, but to transcend the narrow boundaries of commercial speech, to express joyful creativity or capture a particularly telling insight — and sometimes both. This is especially true in South Africa. Think back to the 1990s, when the little white mouse used the […]

There’s a whole other world out there. A world where people log on to Twitter to tweet, and retweet and chat with other tweeples. But what is it all about? Is it just another time waster? A little sister to Facebook that’s easier to log onto and see what people’s status updates are? Or is […]

“Hello ma boy! Hallo ma boy!” Such a uniquely South African expression. The fact that we’re watching a man lovingly telling this to an enormous male lion that could kill him in seconds if he felt like it — well, that’s just part of life in amazing (as opposed to poor, benighted) Africa. Now, while […]