I’m done with Derrick Watshisname and the Carte crew. I am honestly disappointed with the quality of their stories. More and more often I am seeing one sided, ill-researched pieces that lack any semblance of coherence. I’m also not sure what Tyler was on about in his post, lauding the piece as decent and fairly accurate. Think I might have caught a different show in a parallel universe on a different tangent to the one Tyler watched.

Their piece on Web 2.0 was horrific. Congratulations to Rafiq and Dave for cracking the nod and showing some sense in a show filled with rambling and jumping from topic to topic.

I followed Twitter throughout the show and there were some interesting responses to it throughout. Jason from Zoopy was insistent that we should take the story from where it comes, ie: old media. Boring argument that means nothing to me.

I work for an “old media” company that is moving forward in leaps and bounds. M&G have been relentless in their new media endeavors and have definitely been heading the web 2. shove in SA.

Carte Blanche, it appears, searched for “blogging” using this new toy they’ve found called “google” or something and came up with two names. Dave and Rafiq were both interviewed and made alot of sense. But what happened to getting more than one side of the story and more than one opinion in a piece? Dave and Rafiq work relatively closely with one another and are both based in CT. Now to the average viewer in SA it appears as if there is only web 2.0 development happening in CT. What about George, JHB, Durban and developers who roam the country? What about innovation on a national level?

Why did they not take a look at the gurus of web 2.0 in SA who are pushing the envelope? Props to Rafiq for doing what he does and Dave for spreading the ideals and concepts to those who don’t know, but I know for a fact that UKZN is also pushing new media as well as Rhodes University. Why not talk to those people too? Why only UCT as an institution.

One twitterer commented: “@rafiq @daveduarte @zoopedup nice one guys…wife still doesn’t get it though LOL ;P”. That reflects bad journalism.

John Webb has done some brilliant stuff with 702 Talk Radio and Carte Blance but this was dismal. The story jumped from web, to Mxit, to Facebook, flashing screenshots of TED conferences, YouTube videos and a host of other irrelevant pictures to look more web 2.0. None of these things were spoken of in the actual story.

Another whopper of a quote from the story: “The pace of change has exceeded our ability to keep up.” What exactly does that mean and who exactly are they referring to?

In essence all that I am saying is that a show like this should never have been broadcast without an actual point. In fact, an explanation of something would’ve been great. There was no definition of what web 1.0 was, never mind what web 2.0 is and where it’s headed.

Pictured in a few of the scenes were Charl Norman and his site BlueWorld. Not a word spoken about the site, its competition with Facebook or a peep from Charl. I wonder if they knew Charl was behind BlueWorld when they filmed him with Rafiq, having coffee?

I’m disappointed but not surprised with the level of their reporting and hope that they read this post (if they’ve learned anything from their own story) and realise that there is a lot more going on out there than two gurus in one city.

Please don’t mistake my post for ranting. I have no value to add to the show that was broadcast so this is not a jealousy thing. It’s a responsible journalism thing.

Again, congratulations to Dave and Rafiq who both deserved their exposure and it’s great to see some exposure around the topic.

See for yourself: