The best way to sell something is to have your customers do it for you. People trust each other much more than they do the corporate message or your best advertising slick, and brands around the world have shown the value of using this to their advantage. A study by McKinsey found that 67% of […]
Media
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Turkey, WordPress and a little bit of honesty, please
Last week, a Turkish court issued an order to block WordPress.com in Turkey. Yes, the whole of WordPress.com, which hosts more than a million blogs. The blocking of is a result of a defamation claim brought by Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahya), who claims that a few blogs hosted by WordPress.com slandered both him and […]
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Manto, the multimedia story
The Sunday Times story surrounding our embattled health minister has been a good example of integrated journalism. The newspaper broke the big story, yet the online presence went further than just plonking a repeat of the story on the web. Nowadays, media companies are publishing source material and the original supporting documentation of their stories […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
What the Guardian’s journalism tells us about the media … and Thabo Mbeki
“…what this episode tells us is that respected foreign correspondents such as McGreal are willing to believe almost anything about our president.”
Posted inMedia, Tech
The rules of engagement
The selection committee for the Amablogoblogo team is now in session. We are using the following rigorous three-stage procedure to choose the shapers and shakers of blogging, social media and Web 2.0 in South Africa: 1. Consulting animal entrails. It worked for the Romans, and science has not yet conclusively refuted its effectiveness. 2. In […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Pan-Arab blog spat: The power of a good story
The treatment of Iraqis at Jordan’s Queen Alia Airport triggered a storm in the Middle Eastern blogosphere. What at first seemed to be a straightforward story of refugees being ill-treated by their neighbour’s security guards has spawned into a pan-Arab blog spat (the type of which is normally reserved for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict). Last week […]
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Is the SABC’s expansion into the rest of Africa neo-imperialism?
A hot topic of debate on the first day of the Africa Media Leadership Conference in Cape Town yesterday was the role the SABC plays in the pan-African media space and whether its African expansion project amounts to neo-imperialism. Ironically, the matter was brought to the fore by Phil Molefe, the head of SABC’s international […]
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The spokesperson you have called is not available at present …
Sonia Gandhi — president of the Indian National Congress and the leader of the ruling Indian Congress Alliance — is planning to visit South Africa. Obviously, the Mail & Guardian would like an interview. So a colleague phoned one Manusha Pillai, the Department of Foreign Affairs employee who had sent out the press release on […]
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But John Robbie a Sunday Times Mampara?
I was surprised to see Talk Radio 702 morning presenter John Robbie named the