UPDATE: Apparently there has been some sort of a mixup regarding the Zapiro book launch. It seems as though there is someone from the PR company and Charity organisations involved with Zapiro didn’t really know when the book launch was so instead she led us to believe that the launch was at her event which was a charity event and hence we were asked to pay.

On a side not: I still maintain that media should never pay to promote events or attend functions.

I absolutely love Zapiro’s work. I think the man is a genius and one of South Africa’s great heroes. With that said, I think he has made a shocking error with his book launch.

It is not clear whether Zapiro is calling the shots or whether his PR agency has completely and utterly lost their minds. Either way I am a bit shocked.

To attend Zapiro’s book launch as media is going to cost R200 per person. Crew of two = R400 for the event. I have done many weird, strange, odd, different and uncomfortable things in my time in the practice of journalism. I have NEVER paid to cover a story or promote an event.

Zoopy was told to pay R200 per person to attend the event and were basically told that we should feel lucky because media gets a 50% discount. Really? Media get a discount, well gee-wizz-wow I am bowled over at your kindness.

Direct quote from “events coordinator”:

As per our discussion earlier, unfortunately we don’t allow any media to attend any of our upcoming events for free.
Our normal price per person to attend the event is R427-50 including VAT, however we offer Media a discounted rate of R200-00 per person including VAT.
Should you still be interested to attend the event, please contact me before the end of today and have your credit card details ready to process the payment online as we only accept payments upfront to pay the venue. Our system is set-up to only accept credit card payments when a booking is made 5 working days prior to an event.

So in return for our R400 Zapiro’s book launch will get national exposure, a professionally produce media video and the possibility to be featured on some of the biggest news websites in the country. That sounds like a fair trade to me.

I am sorry but I don’t care if you are a journalism intern, the editor of the biggest magazine or Jeremy bloody Clarkson, media should not have to pay to attend any launch of any book that could aid in the sales of that book.

Absolutely ridiculous.

The frustrating thing is that Zoopy (and I am sure many other media organisations) have covered Zapiro launches and events very successfully and for free in the past:

If you want to read Zapiro I suggest you visit Mail&Guardian online every day and have a look at Zapiro’s free.

Again I need to state that I think that Zapiro cartoons and all of his work is absolutely incredible, so don’t make us pay to help you spread the word.

This is the presentation I just gave at Highway Africa 2008.

Yes, I think podcasts are useful in fact, I think podcasting can be an extremely useful mechanism for relaying a message, point, story or event.

I found a post on podcasting being dead or alive through one of Eve’s blogs. I must say I immediately sprang to blog about it because I recently made use of podcasting as a citizen journalism media.

Admittedly I focus much of my thought around social media and web 2.0 on how it affects the mass media on the whole and how the “little person” or Citizen Journalist can benefit from the trends emerging at the moment.

Early Adoption failed me

Podcasting really caught my attention and I tried my hand at it on SA Rocks and the RocksCast. Must like Dave and Mike with their Amplitude, SA RocksCast died.

I think that I tried to jump on the bandwagon and appear to be an “early adopter” with my attempt at podcasting. I didn’t really grasp the media platform itself nor fully understand how to market or create these podcasts effectively. So it died a quick death.

Vincent Maher and I also tried our hand at a podcasting targeting the local sphere. Flamebait was short lived because we were a bit zealous in our approach to the content and it was shot down by editorial staff. Oh well. Needless to say the actual media itself still intrigues me.

So are podcasts dead? No, I don’t think so. Taly Weiss brings up a good point regarding the technology behind podcasting. If it is there then podcasting itself is not dead. In other words, if we have iPods and media players that are capable of storing and playing back podcasts then the media is not dead. But that isn’t really always true. I still have a VHS player, that doesn’t mean that VHS isn’t dead, it is. And if you think it isn’t, trust me it’s on the way to the grave.

Podcasting and Citizen Journalism

While on a mission at the Million Man March this year I discovered that one doesn’t need to consistently make use of a specific type of media for it to be effective.

While making use of various platforms to update people about the event I was asked to do a podcast interview over the phone for The Times. What a great idea. One of their journalists called me and did a short (one or two minute) interview with me about the event.

This proved to be a very effective means to get my message across. Yes it was for a big media organisation so that helped ofcourse. But the essence of that instance made sense to me. Why do we have to produce a podcast every week, month, day etc etc. When all that is really needed is an event or story to make a great podcast.

Grassroots media or citizen journalists can really produce viable content for their websites over the phone with simple technology. Use a digital dictaphone, if fact, use the recorder on your cell phone, make sure you are succinct in your 3 minutes and publish it as is.

Rally your media around events, don’t make an event out of your media.

I am a disappointed in some “online professionals”. The reason I am using the term with my tongue poking and prodding at my cheek is because I believe there is a fair amount of professionalism being thrown down the toilet. Mandy de Waal wrote an article for ITWeb titled “Who’s who in the Web 2.0 Zoo?“.

Some people seemingly took great offence that there where no people of colour in the article. Rafiq was invited to participate, he declined. The angle of the article was simply an interview and answer process. Certain people who are major players in the online market were asked to name three people who they would want to work with in the online arena. These people did so. Not based on racial innuendos as justifications. These were simply the people who each interviewee wished to work with on a professional level.

Unfortunately someone needed to respond, someone always need to respond, and needed to emphatically make a racial statement. This is extremely sad. Ramon Thomas took up the cause and titled his article “Who’s who in the non-white Web 2.0 South African Zoo“. The title alone immediately marginalises his audience and those involved in his article. He immediately boxes those in his article and ostracizes those who read it.

The immediate feeling that I get is that this is like affirmative action in sports teams – the Springboks to be precise. The situation that rugby players of colour have faced in the past is a lose-lose, if they are chosen they question the reasons for their selection. If they are not chosen then they wonder if it was due to their race. Lose. Lose.

If I was on Ramon’s list I’d be pretty upset. The candidates on this list are no longer the best in their profession but only the best in their racial class. Mandy’s article might have lacked some depth but she did not force the answers out of the participants, they chose out of their own free will. She also did not classify her article as black or white inspite of the black text and white background colour. Now there are more web professionals who have been dragged in to this to make a statement. They have become pawns in the game of race.

Mandy made an error in undermining hew own article when she used a pull quote that included the words “White boys club”. If this was the angle of the story then I think that this would have been an integral part of an article that would be able to ask some very important questions about the racial state of the online industry. The pull quote was irrelevant in the context of her story and in my opinion undermined the people who took part in the article.

There is an important question to be asked: where are the black professionals in the online industry?

Darren Ravens asks the question more appropriately. But I think that Darren Gorton got it right.

Personally I would like to be considered a media professional for the work that I do, not for the work that I do as a white(ish), Greek (almost), South African male.

As many people know the mobile industry is big business, especially here in SA and in the broader African market.

I’ve been making some inroads in to trying to undestand the mobile market as fully as possible recently.

I am lookingt at the mobile market as someone heavily involved in the media industry and trying to find a place for the media in the mobile market. I am not considering the mobile market from the point of view of a startup, website, portal, communication idea or gaming company. I am looking at the mobile market from the perspective of an organisation that produces weekly content that goes in to a newspaper.

There are some things that I have noticed and some problems that I have seen with the theory that mobile is going to be the next big thing very soon.

Lets begin with three quick points:

1. Communication is actually THE mobile market
2. Social Networking is the up-and-commer
3. Gaming is already making a mark – a massive one – on the market
4. The service providers are the ones making the money

And now let us go through the barriers to entry that I feel exist for media in the mobile market.

1. Newspaper content is a push market
2. Mobile users want to own their content – pull it towards themselves
3. Understanding of extensive mobile web surfing is low in higher LSM’s
4. Portals are non-exist, with the exception of service providers

The basic barriers that I have listed above make it extremely difficult for media organisations to make a valuable stand in the mobile market. Users are looking to interact with one another and content. This means they want to create the content, interact with it, send it to their friends, invite their friends to interact with eachother and their content. This is difficult as a media organisation when you are producing the content and pushing it to the market.

I am interested to know if you agree with these barriers? Do you think that media is stuck in a “push” business model? Or are they making inroads in to the “pull” of content creation, distribution and user interaction?