"Fit for purpose": towards tracking the quality of university education of entry-level journalists
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159835 , vital:40348 , DOI: 10.1080/02560054.2005.9653329
- Description: Debate about the extent to which university education should serve industry is an important consideration for institutions of higher learning in a transforming South Africa, and particularly for those teaching would-be journalists. This issue can also be profitably analysed with reference to the current framework of the South African education authorities who argue that the quality of higher education institutions should be measured in terms of their “fit for purpose” to missions aligned to stakeholder interests in the transformation of the country as a whole. This criterion for quality assessment tends to focus on the educative processes within a university, but it can be argued that it ought to extend into the examination of the output consequences of journalism teaching. This would amount to not just fitness for purpose, but also achievement of purpose – and the latter including a creative and critical impact.
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- Date Issued: 2010
From content to conversation: can cellphones be used for journalism?
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159310 , vital:40286 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC140074
- Description: Rhodes' School of Journalism and Media Studies has R8m to try and turn cellphones into interactive journalistic devices over the next four years. The work takes place under a project titled "Iindaba Ziyafika" - meaning "the news is coming".
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- Date Issued: 2008
Sing a swansong for the SABC as we know it : keep public broadcasting, redistribute the broadcaster
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159326 , vital:40288 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC140098
- Description: Behind the dragged-out confrontations around the SABC are a politics of paralysis. That's not necessarily a bad thing if the alternative is the broadcaster being a tool of a single particular force. But it's also not exactly first prize for South Africans. Power is divided across so many centres that no single force has been able to easily prevail on SABC during the year.
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- Date Issued: 2008
Education is a spring … it bubbles:
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159288 , vital:40284 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC144678
- Description: Asians, Americans, Australians. A handful of Africans and a couple of Arabs. A sprinkling of Canadians, Mexicans, Finns. An Israeli, a Chilean and quite a few others. In total, 450 people from some 50 countries. In common: they're all lecturers and trainers. Busy swopping notes in Singapore at the first-ever World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC) in July. It's a resource-rich pool of ideas and experiences.
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- Date Issued: 2007
More media for Southern Africa?: the place of politics, economics and convergence in developing media density
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147825 , vital:38676 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1080/02560240485310041
- Description: In line with global trends, media in Southern Africa in the past decade has been moving slowly towards mergers, partnerships and multi-platform publishing. Driven by politics and facilitated by technology, the process has had to confront the difficulty of establishing viable economic models, the lack of regional integration within Southern African countries, and what is sometimes a difficult political environment. Markets remain largely national or local and economically weak. Print media faces huge hurdles. Broadcast media density is improving, partly through noncommercial mechanisms. News websites are understaffed, lacking in viable survival strategies and skills, and are incompletely integrated with parent media platforms. Economic pressures, however, are likely to force Southern African media operations into greater synergies in search of survival. The various convergences entailed may increase media density.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Problematising race for journalists: critical reflections on the South African Human Rights Commission Inquiry into media racism
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147913 , vital:38684 , DOI: 10.1080/02560240185310081
- Description: How journalists report race and racism was at the centre of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) Inquiry into racism in the media. A critical analysis of the conceptual assumptions in the Inquiry's Final Report, however, reveals serious limitations to the enterprise. In particular the flawed conceptualisations, plus the generalised character of the findings are of little help in assisting the momentum of eradicating racism in South African media, and for linking race transformation to issues of class, gender, sexual orientation and xenophobia. This article identifies the problems as race essentialism and a relativism about what constitutes racism. It argues instead that journalists need the concept of racialisation in order to change their reporting. The argument upholds the desired role of the South African media as one that contributes to a non-racial, as opposed to a multi-racial, society.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Harnessing newsroom knowledge:
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159244 , vital:40280 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC146387
- Description: Nairobi's Nation newspaper has a sophisticated content management system (CMS); Grahamstown's Grocott's Mail has a patchwork of paper and computer tech. In Harare, the Mirror and the Independent newspapers fall somewhere in between. But what all of them lack is a way to use information communication technologies for knowledge management.
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- Date Issued: 2005
The new media maelstrom:
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159192 , vital:40276 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC146201
- Description: South Africa's democracy decade coincided with the popularisation of the Internet on a global scale. New society, new media, it seemed.
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- Date Issued: 2004
Interrogate the information society:
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159181 , vital:40275 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC146276
- Description: If there is one thing journalists should know about the "Information Society", it's this: never use the phrase as if its meaning speaks for itself. This is one of the most slippery and contentious phrases yet to grace contemporary discourse. For a start, why "Information Society" and not "Knowledge Society"? And why "society" and not "economy"? This is not academic semantics. There are wholly different meanings at stake with different implications for journalists, politicians, policy makers and many more.
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- Date Issued: 2003
Press vs public enemy no 1:
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159083 , vital:40266 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC146291
- Description: Our journalism about poverty is pitiful. It's a story about the poverty of our journalism. But let's start with the not-so-bad news: unlike many other countries, we do report poverty. Also, unlike many other places, we don't blame the victims - rather, we tend to be sympathetic.
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- Date Issued: 2003
The trouble with ‘race’: how it constricts our view of the world
- Authors: Berger, Guy
- Date: 2001
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159067 , vital:40264 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC144703
- Description: Racism must go, few would dispute that. Better still: journalists should consign not just racism, but also the concept of 'race', to the proverbial spike, writes Guy Berger.
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- Date Issued: 2001