Lyndall Beddy made a couple of comments on Thought Leader that have been problematic. The most recent of these comments was this at the bottom of a recent post: “Western Culture for centuries has satirised leaders and held them accountable. African culture, until recently has been feudal, and venerated leaders, without holding them accountable. Both […]
Media
Posted inBusiness, Media
Digital marketing: do your homework first
Ten years ago, digital marketing simply meant online marketing, by placing a banner on a website and very little else. Some banners didn’t even click through to a website, as advertisers didn’t have a web presence. Media owners even got away with charging a “loading fee” to have the ad serving on their website, with […]
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South Africa’s best PR resource
Living outside of South Africa and reading the local media, it’s always interesting to see what kind of coverage we get. Not a whole lot of news about South Africa reaches Australia; that much is obvious. The only time South African news did make it into the headlines was during the xenophobic violence that wracked […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Ritalin: Tik for the middle classes
I received an email this week from a parent who had read an article I wrote a while back on Ritalin, asking whether we are poisoning our children with the stuff or paving a better future for them — though somewhat numbed! Ritalin is a metaphor for everything ugly about modern medicine — a form […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
SA’s first online reality show!
“Can You Twist is South Africa’s first online reality show featuring six of the country’s hottest young female storytellers … and your votes. Six weeks, six women, six twists and one ultimate winner!” How could I resist? How could anyone? To be honest, though, it wasn’t the online reality-show line that got me. Nor being […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Institutions shoring up Eurocentrism and ‘Western civilisation’ are not ‘non-partisan’
A contribution to Thought Leader by David Saks reminded me of an intellectual movement with which I associate myself, and which questions the continued application of Western thought/Eurocentrism as the dominant paradigm for social organisation — especially governance, policy-making, development and so forth. Out of this movement emerges a body of thought that questions the […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics
The ANC’s newspaper for people who don’t read newspapers
The easiest way to make a small fortune from newspapers, a wise man once said, is to start with a large fortune. The ANC would do well to keep this advice in mind as it considers a proposal to acquire its own newspaper. Despite the sensational headline in The Times, the so-called “detailed plans” to […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Searching for meaning in a bottle of chutney
These days, it takes me a while to get around to reading the South African Sunday papers. So it was only today that I spotted this article on people going through the emigration application process. One anecdote stood out, an email from someone’s sister in Toronto begging for a few essentials: Please, I beg of […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
The pornography of violence
When does news become the glorification or pornography of violence?
Posted inMedia
The war of the newspapers?
I have been meaning to put this down for a while but kept procrastinating until yesterday afternoon, when I again drove past that billboard on the M1 South that reads “We’re ahead of the times”. Now normally I would not give a rat’s you know what at such an advertisement, except this one is courtesy […]
Posted inBusiness, Media, News/Politics
The joy of officespeak
Many writers decry office-speak such as “going forward” or “step up to the plate” as “useless” or “irritating”. Let’s celebrate it instead. There are many uses for office-speak, or biz-speak, or buzzwords. “Going forward” has especially come in for criticism as a kind of nervous tick in business speech, a filler phrase without any meaning […]
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The Peddlar, the Minister and the Inspector
Justice Zondi’s careful and deliberate judgment in the Cape High Court case brought by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and South African Medical Association (SAMA) against Dr Matthias Rath and others, has several interesting consequences. The main issues in the case were whether or not Dr Rath had been conducting unauthorised clinical trials, whether or […]