Telegraph journalist gets mauled in lion’s enclosure (video)

We’ve just watched a Telegraph TV video: journalist Charles Starmer Smith getting mauled by a lion in Limpopo Province, South Africa – after entering its enclosure.

Perhaps his comment that ‘the lion just obeys what he [Arrie, the handler] does and plays (…) but stops up to a point’ was a little premature. He doesn’t look so relaxed when the animal’s teeth are firmly stuck into his leg.

Nonetheless, he is smiling when he steps out of the enclosure: he can’t wait to get home and ’show off’ his scars he says. Then he goes off to get some stitches.

Starmer Smith’s account here.

Video at this link.

(Hat-tip: Fred Hatman)

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SA president Zuma accepts damages from Guardian in libel case

South African president Jacob Zuma last week settled his libel case against the Guardian and accepted ’substantial damages’ from the paper, according to Reuters.

Zuma began proceedings in March after publication of a piece by Simon Jenkins, which was subsequently removed from the Guardian website, suggested he was guilty of rape.

Zuma continued with a civil case against the Guardian newspaper, despite an apology run by the title in April.

The reference was the result of an editing error, the paper said in its apology – Zuma was acquitted of rape charges in 2006, it said.

But the apology was not deemed appropriate by Zuma’s lawyers. According to the Reuters’ report, the Guardian’s owners made an offer of damages in May, which was accepted by Zuma last week.

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#FollowJourn: @FredHatman/blogger

FollowJourn: Fred Hatman

Who? Freelance writer and blogger

What? Newspaper hack turned Nu-Skool Media and he’s just started a new South African blog, http://fredhatman.co.za/, aiming to provide a satirical look at the FIFAWorld Cup 2010. His aim? “To report what the PR-generated tourist brochure froth doesn’t tell about South Africa… the undiluted truth.”

Where? @fredhatman

Contact? Via blog

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IOL.co.za: ‘Mugabe at the centre of press freedom row’

As reported by South Africa’s Independent Online: “If Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s daughter Bona harboured hopes of keeping a low profile while she completes her university course in Hong Kong, they were dealt a painful blow this week.

“The 20-year-old has found herself at the centre of a ferocious row over press freedom after two bodyguards protecting her were spared prosecution for grappling with two photographers outside the luxury home her father provided for her during her studies.”

Full story at this link…

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Marketingweb: An optimistic view of online ad growth for 2009

Diane Charton, writing for MarketingWeb, paints a pretty picture for worldwide online advertising spend in 2009. She cites a ZenithOptimedia forecast from December 2008 to support her case, partly focused on the situation in South Africa.

Full story…

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South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper unveils new all singing, all dancing website

South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper has substantially revamped its website, in the process introducing a series of new features to improve usability.

M&G Online’s general manager Matthew Buckland blogged recently about the use of Thompson Reuters Open Calais semantic tagging technology to organise and cross-reference all the site’s content for the relaunch.

In addition to this the revamp has introduced a number of key features:

Registration and dashboard

• Like the Guardian in the UK, the new M&G site now allows users to save clippings of favourite articles and story history while browsing.
• Comment on articles and debate with other readers

New features

• It has also introduced a topics A-Z: A list of people, places, subjects and organisations covered by the site
• Added a feature – NewsSwarm – that allows users to see who is viewing which article in real time
• Integrated articles with Google Maps
• Make the popular cartoon sections searchable and tagged
• Added easy exploration of e-commerce areas: jobs, cars, dating, property and shopping
• Allowed users to view related articles from outside the news website.
• Added video feeds

Semantic tagging – a key new element

• Tag clouds of subjects, people and places on the home page and news sections
• Articles regionally organised and can be viewed by country or city with South African news at town, city or provincial level
• Articles are also tagged with names of cities, countries, companies or organisations, and people, which can be viewed in the Topics A-Z section

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Online Journalism Scandinavia: Here come the Web 2.0 docusoaps

Swedes are getting so hooked on social media that for many web-crazy young things reality-TV has all but moved online.

Last night Twingly, the Swedish web company that supplies a blog trackback functionality to newspapers world-wide and last week launched its international spam free blog search engine Twingly.com, aired the first programme of its new reality-series on YouTube: The Summer of Code.

YouTube reality-show
“We have recruited four ambitious interns and given them six weeks to develop a visual search engine for blogs; Twingly Blogoscope,” said Martin Källström, CEO of Twingly.

“Everyone can follow what happens in the project via daily episodes on YouTube.”

The episodes will be uploaded Monday to Friday at 6 PM GMT (10 AM in San Francisco, 19:00 in Stockholm) and the first programme aired last night.

“Openness in this project is a way to show the daily life in the office,” said Källström.

“Generally people are not familiar with the stimulating working atmosphere in a start-up. Hopefully Twingly Summer of Code will inspire more people to join Twingly or other start-ups.”

Media increasingly about conversation
Last week, Twingly launched its search engine Twingly.com to track 30 million blogs all over the world.

Despite this global scope, Källström said Twingly will concentrate on being number one in Europe, working with several different European languages.

“Google has not improved its blog search for more than two years,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

The company has teamed up with newspapers in Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and South Africa, to show blog links to the news sites’ articles.

Källström added that his hope was for Twingly to be able to take on both Google and Technorati by providing more functionality and driving traffic to bloggers via its media partnerships.

“Media is more and more about the conversation between media and its readers. We see a very strong synergy between mainstream media and bloggers and try to provide a bridge that can improve this synergy,” he said.

Blogs have replaced docusoaps
Twingly’s target group for The Summer of Code will no doubt draw an audience of uber-geeks but a young Swedish reporter recently admitted she was addicted to a very different sort of ‘web docusoap’.

Madeleine Östlund, a reporter with the Swedish equivalent of Press Gazette, Dagens Media, claimed the country’s fashion blogs had replaced docusoaps (link in Swedish).

She confessed she found it increasingly difficult to live without her daily fix of intimate everyday details and gossip from the country’s high-profile fashion bloggers, a phenomenon Journalism.co.uk has described here.

“It is not their blogging about clothes that draws me in, rather it is the surprise and fascination with which I read about these young girls’ private lives. Surprise and fascination about how much they often reveal,” she wrote, citing posts about broken hearts, hospital stays, what they had for breakfast and descriptions of a caesarian birth.

Roll on the Web 2.0 docusoap about dashing media journalists, I say.

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Mail & Guardian launches latest in blog series

South African newspaper the Mail & Guardian has added a third blog to its website – Sports Leader.

The sports blog will mix opinion and insight from 30 professionals, academics and ‘armchair commentators’, a release from the paper said.

The English Premier League will be covered alongside news from the Springboks rugby team and Bafana – the country’s national football team.

“There is a need for a space where people interested in a diverse range of sports can discuss and debate their sporting passion. What the Mail & Guardian brings through its editorial policy is quality debate and critique and what Sports Leader offers even further is interaction between the fans and their heroes,” Vincent Maher, online strategist at Mail & Guardian Online, said in the release.

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Social Media Journalist: “Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored” Matthew Buckland

Journalism.co.uk talks to reporters across the globe working at the collision of journalism and social media about how they see it changing their industry. This week, Matthew Buckland from Mail & Guardian, South Africa.

1) Who are you and what do you do?
I am Matthew Buckland, the GM of Mail & Guardian Online.

As head of the online division I am responsible for the overall online and mobile strategy, with an overview of editorial, production, technical and online sales.

I am also involved quite heavily in our social media strategies and sites.

2) Which web or mobile-based social media tools do you use on a daily basis and why?
I use Twitter, both web and mobile. I blog on my own blog about online media, web 2.0 and technology, thoughtleader.co.za and sometimes on Poynter’s new media titbits.

I use Mybloglog on my blog quite a bit. I use Facebook web and mobile… but less and less these days. At the end of last year I began using Slideshare to share my presentations and see others. I Digg every now and again, and use a local version, Muti.co.za.

I also keep half an eyeball on Linkedin – but don’t really do it justice. I am an occasional Del.ici.ous user. I use both Flickr and Picasa as online photo albums/photo sharing.

For video sharing I use Youtube, obviously. I’m also a wikipediaholic.

I used SecondLife for about a week, but realised it would be best for my health to shut it down and never look at it again

Generally I find these social media tools are a good way of networking, sharing ideas and content, and building relationships with people. They also waste a lot of time and create noise in my life.

3) Of the thousands of social media tools available could you single one out as having the most potential for news either as a publishing or newsgathering tool?
I think of all the hyped up social media tools we’ve seen, blogging has shown that it is more than just a fad, but here to stay.

We’ve seen how mainstream online publishers have embraced blogs both as new publishing formats and newsgathering tool with considerable success.

4) And the most overrated in your opinion?
I’m beginning to think Facebook is overrated. The novelty is wearing off and people are getting bored, very quickly.

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Viewmagazine hosts ‘vlog butterfly’ for BBC head interview

Viewmagazine.tv, the online magazine of videojournalism, has staged what it describes as an international ‘vlog butterfly’ with Peter Horrocks, head of the BBC’s new multimedia newsroom.

To supplement an interview with Horrocks, videojournalist and editor of the magazine David Dunkley Gyimah asked for video questions to be contributed from interested parties across the world.

Questions were submitted from as far a field as Australia and South Africa, and can be viewed individually, followed by Horrocks’ responses.

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