The finalists are in! The SA Blog Awards 2008 have produced an impressive (and somewhat daunting!) list of finalists in various categories. You can see them all at: http://www.sablogawards.com/2008/ I haven’t had a chance to go through them all yet (will anyone ever have a chance to go through them all?) but I do have […]
Media
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
The last blog
This is my last blog on Thought Leader. I never thought the day would come when the tentacles of oppression would silence freedom of expression, but as long as I have family in this country, the increasingly sinister, menacing and credible threats from the ANC, Jacob Zuma and their legions of thuggish operatives cannot be […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
The funniest thing I’ve read in weeks
Is all of South Africa reading Hayibo (www.hayibo.com)? We all should be. It is by far the most hilarious piece of writing I’ve come across in as long as I can remember, and it comes out every week! What a pleasure. With the tag line “Breaking news. Into lots of little pieces”, Hayibo takes on […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Coconuts, racism and SABC politics
Since the debate about the (re)launch of the Forum of Black Journalists (FBJ) refuses to die and since it will be given new life on Wednesday at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), I thought I would add my own little bit of noise into the cacophony that already exists. No doubt the SAHRC […]
Posted inMedia
Ad shenanigans
On December 20, I sent the final page of my 200th edition of Grocott’s Mail to press in the basement of the building. The press began clunking. It was with a heavy heart that I shut down my computer for the last time and became the former youngest editor of the country’s oldest newspaper. Some […]
Posted inMedia, Tech
We are living in a free-love society
In a rather illuminating article in the latest Trendwatching brief, the discussion is about free love. It’s about businesses offering goods, services or experiences to consumers for free and making their money from other things. Prime examples that come to mind are the home printers that are dirt cheap but where you have to take […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Touch me, feel me: The internet as sensory organ
The Internet is a global stethoscope that allows us to listen in to the world’s most intimate secrets. It is an extension of our nervous system, the thing that connects one of us to the other, allowing us to experience the world and transform our emotional responses. And the ways in which Professor Shinichi Takemura, […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
High fidelity
Embroiled as I am in an argument with a furious member of the artistic community, I’m feeling the need to clear up some issues about art in this country. And before anyone starts saddling up the old high horse preparatory to riding me out of Dullsville, let me point out that just about the only […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
On being banal about evil and human tragedies (in fiction)
Les bienveillantes is such a huge and, apparently, dense book that even most book lovers are likely to go out of their way to avoid it. The original version is in French and more than 900 pages long; the Spanish-language translation has 973 pages. The English-language translations — one in the US, one in Britain […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
An idea so good you can eat it
Anne Taylor blogs for Thought Leader from the Design Indaba in Cape Town. Dutch designer Marije Vogelzang laid out a feast of delicious ideas that the audience gobbled up at this year’s Design Indaba, now on in Cape Town: tablecloths of dough draped over shapes so it dries into edible bowls, revolvers made out of […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
The politics of media development
The term “media development” might remind many people in South Africa of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA). Well, the term has become a buzzword in international media financing. My aim here is to draw upon a talk I gave in 2007 at the Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership/Konrad-Adenuer-Stiftung conference for media executives […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Playing designer dot-to-dot at the Indaba
Anne Taylor blogs for Thought Leader from the Design Indaba in Cape Town When you’re knee-deep in all that’s trendy and chic at the Design Indaba, there’s something deeply reassuring about a man who is totally unpretentious. Especially if he’s a world-class, world-famous designer. Ivan Chermayeff is clear and simple — and witty in an […]