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
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.”
Brought to Journalism.co.uk’s attention by Brand Republic – this apology in the Guardian to South African presidential candidate Jacob Zuma.
The paper apologised to the ANC party leader for a piece published on March 6, which suggested he was guilty of rape. The correction was run yesterday – a day before polling opened in South Africa.
Following its original publication Zuma demanded an apology and damages from the paper.
The reference was the result of an editing error, the paper maintains – Zuma was acquitted of rape charges in 2006, it said in its apology.
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.
Reuters, Associated Press (AP) and Agence France Presse (AFP) will not cover matches, training sessions and events for cricket in Australia, because of ‘unacceptable accreditation terms’ set out by Cricket Australia, the sport’s governing body in the country.
According to a release from Reuters:
“No text stories, photos or video of any of the training sessions, matches, press conferences or events will be distributed by the international news agencies to media around the world for the first test against New Zealand later this month, and potentially for the South Africa test coming up in December.”
Reuters partner Getty Images will provide images and ‘fulfil their commercial obligations only’ e.g. not providing any editorial of the matches.
Rights organisation the News Media Coalition said the agencies had been in discussions with Cricket Australia for months before rejecting the terms, which featured several restrictions relating to online coverage including:
“As in previous instances, this decision [the accreditation terms] compromises our ability to report independently and objectively, and comes at the expense of global fans and sponsors,” said Christoph Pleitgen, global head of News Agency for Thomson Reuters, in the release.
“We would like to resume our timely, premium coverage as quickly as possible, pending a solution to the current situation. However, freedom of the press and protecting the news interests and coverage rights of our global clients are at the core of both our business and Reuters editorial principles, and these must be upheld.”
A report from Africa’s Independent Review Commission (IREC), which was set up to investigate last year’s disputed presidential elections in Kenya, has cleared the country’s media of professional malpractice in its coverage of the election results, and blamed the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) and politicians of delaying results at grassroots level.
The commission, which has trashed claims of rigging and alteration of presidential results at the National Tally Centre – the main complaint of the opposition, also dismissed concerns over the media’s role in the post-election violence raised by international observers, including the European Union, as overly reliant on hearsay.
IREC – headed by retired South African Judge Johann Kriegler – recommended that the media should be fed results electronically to increase speed and that a secure line of transmitting results from village polling stations to the headquarters be developed with an access password for all media houses.
“The media was under pressure to relay results, politicians and the electoral commission of Kenya delayed the numbers, the media had no choice but to report what they had, you cannot blame the beast if you have not fed it,” reads the report.
However, the report did find fault with vernacular media stations for fuelling tension after the announcement of the election results and called for a review of employment policies in media houses. “Only professionals should be employed,” it said.
“How can you blame the media when politicians forced their way into the press centre and took over the role of the ECK at a time when there was[sic] information gaps?” asked the 117-page report.
Within the next 15 days another report on the media’s handling of the elections is expected to be presented to President Mwai Kibaki and former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was chief mediator in the post-election crisis.
The report is expected to name, shame and recommend crucial steps that politicians, the media and the ECK should take to avoid a repeat of such violence in future.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has called for a full investigation into the death of photojournalist Richard Mills, who died while working for The Times in Zimbabwe.
In a letter from NUJ president James Doherty to South African president Thabo Mbeki, the union raised concerns that Mills’ death could be linked to his work and was not suicide as claimed by the Zimbabwean authorities.
“The National Union of Journalists shares with his family, colleagues and friends their grave concern at the circumstances surrounding Richard’s death (…)You will be aware that the current Zimbabwean government has a notorious record in relation to human rights and freedom of expression. Against this background we are requesting that you raise this incident in your discussions with Zimbabwean authorities to ensure that it is investigated in an open and transparent manner,” the letter said.
Mills, whose funeral was held in Belfast yesterday, was working undercover for The Times at the time of his death.
Editorial Photographers UK published an obituary for Richard on the site.
UPDATE – the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), who had also called for an investigation into Richard’s death, have withdrawn their demand after his family announced they had accepted the result of a post-mortem, which suggested he had taken his own life.
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
New features
Semantic tagging – a key new element
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.
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.