Find a story, construct it and set it free...everywhere

Irrespective of the medium in which the story is being told the key is that the story needs to be good.That is my basic premise and that is what I stand by.In today's market stories are able to be told in various mediums with various levels of interaction, lengths, research and dedication. This can be a wonderful movement in the right direction. However if merely taken at face value story telling can be lost and misused.Good stories will prevail and let's be honest if there is anything that we learned from the Carte Blanche story on Web 2.0 it's that audiences are not stupid.Basically what I am trying to get across is that primarily journalists are just that, journalists. This is their charge in life, their career, reputation and job. I live my career and am passionate about the maintenance of my industry, the ethics and self preservation (ofcourse).The order of things is simple: The story, the building of the story, the medium used to promote the story and the audience the story reaches.I think that in the media industry today the above order has been marginalised and isolated.In other words, a journalist (whether multimedia, writer, photographer or whatever) works for a magazine for example, has an idea for a story and creates it. Then gives it to the magazine and they publish it.The magazine's target audience does not change week to week depending on the story so basically it's up to us (media producers) to make that change, not so? No, not so apparently.The other way of looking at this scenario is how the story is changed to fit the medium and target audience. In the process the story becomes twisted, warped and loses its thrust. Thus not portraying its initial and intended message effectively. Perfect example of this for me is the Carte Blanche story.The situation there was simple and in my mind two things could have changed the outcome of the story.Firstly: The medium for Carte Blanche is television. Therefore there isn't much time to get in to the nitty gritty of a subject like web 2.0. Yet they still wanted to appear to be "cutting edge" so they stuck with it. Their deadlines were tight and had three days to compose a story. The justification for their failure to find more sources was that they were in Cape Town.Considering the story is about technological developments and web 2.0 why didn't Carte Blanche really cut some edges, get on to skype, twitter, Facebook and other mediums and do interviews in that way?That's what I call using the tools to make a story. The story idea was there, their market is solidified in many years of broadcasting so all that was left was to construct a story that they could put forward effectively. Using these mediums altogether would have expressed some sense of "web 2.0" and communication developments.Furthermore, why didn't Carte Blanche push the story on to their website? Whatever could not have been done on TV could've been carried over to their website, more integration, more solutions, wider audience and effective use of the tools available to them.Secondly: Change the name of the piece of you couldn't get the right information to fill the story effectively. Simple.Back to the point. The essence of what I am trying to say is that mentality needs to shift in media organisations. Most, if not all major media houses have established and consistent audiences who use various media resources to gather information. Take a story and mould it in to three of four different beasts and set it free. More exposure from a wider audience.I have made a decision to slightly change the angle of my blog, as you can see, I am heavily embedded in the media sphere in South Africa (as many of you already know) and I believe that this is where my passion and my experience lie. So that is what I will be focusing on. The posts might be less frequent, but will hopefully be more in-depth regarding the media in SA.

I've had it with Carte Blanche

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:

Change is Brewing

Ruda Landman is leaving Carte Blanche according to an Iol story. I am not saddened by this. She is an incredible investigative journalist and business woman, but it has been 19 years that she has been a part of the show. Hopefully the show will not suffer but will carry on with some fresh blood.Carte Blanche needs to take this opportunity to redesign, re-align and refocus their goals and ambitions for the next 19 years without Ruda.I hope that wherever Ruda goes she goes well and is successful, but thank goodness she is leaving Carte Blanche. Now, anyone got any ideas for Derek?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.

Mnet and Afrikaans content

I have been meaning to post about this topic for a while now. I have noticed over the last

couple of months that Mnet's content is somewhat restricted. Mnet airs a fair amount of local content, I have studied over the years that local content might be patriotic and all but often it is the foreign shows that pull in the audiences. Thus Mnet and SABC will pay to gain the rights for these shows. Fair.

I have somewhat of an issue with the local content that Mnet chooses to air. I have just clicked on the Mnet channel website and saw not a single black face. I am not making this about race necessarily because there are lots of black American TV shows so that's cool too.

But why are there no shows in other languages with black faces as the forerunners? It has been eons that Egoli had been on the air and then Mnet chooses Binnelanders to take on as another major local production as well as Voetspore. I don't get. Yes Tumi is on the air now too but this show is a very elitist type of show with highfalutin content. Not a run of the mill soapie, series or show that is for the entire family or entire demographic of our country. Snitch is a recent addition to the Mnet family and does a good job, but this is one hour a week of diverse local content that I am not so sure is being watched by the current Mnet audience.

I understand that Mnet is not a free channel or government provided. I get that. But why not cater for an ever growing diverse market? Maybe their subscribers are still majority white but then maybe because the content is majority white the subscribers are too? It's a bit of a chicken and egg issue here isn't it?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.