Grubstreet

The fascinating puzzle that is The New Age

There are many curious things about the launch of the government-friendly The New Age newspaper scheduled for September but chief among them is that the editor, Vuyo Mvoko, is no ANC lackey. He’s a respected political hack (I worked with him at Business Day many years ago) so why, we media luvvies have wondered, would [...]

SA World Cup media coverage: Cost versus value

Even with fun, new-fangled ways to share experiences, such as Twitter and Facebook, even with online and with the 2010 FIFA World Cup haven taken place right here in our own country, big international sporting events belong to television. You might have sprung the cash to go see two or three live games during the [...]

A very pleasing new-look Business Day website

19 July 2010

Well, blow me down but Business Day has a new-look website — and very pleasing it is too! It often seems to me that Business Day and BDFM in general is treated as the poor step-sister in the Avusa family (BDFM is a joint venture, which means it is owned jointly by Avusa and Pearson, [...]

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Naspers 2010/09 annual results: Happy campers all the way

16 July 2010

Let me count the ways that we can compare Naspers and Avusa: the bull and the bear; the quick and the dead; diamonds and dogs. The two media companies released their annual results – for the year to March 31 2010 – in the past week, prompting many a smarty-pants media writer such as myself [...]

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Trevor Ncube’s brave new Zimbabwe

16 July 2010

Trevor Ncube, the owner of the Mail & Guardian newspaper, has leaped back into the brave new world that is Zimbabwe today with a new daily newspaper, NewsDay. The Zimbabwean publisher and entrepreneur who remained a thorn in President Robert Mugabe’s side with his two weekly newspaper even after he left Zimbabwe talks about the [...]

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e.tv’s Sam Rogers on her CNN-award-winning doccie

16 July 2010

Sam Rogers of e.tv recently won the top prize at this year’s CNN MultiChoice African Journalist 2010 Awards for her 36-minute documentary (have a look at the excerpt below) on Tanzania’s albino people, who face discrimination every day and are victims in a growing trade in albino body parts. An edited version of Rogers’ doccie, [...]

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Chris Whitfield on the Argus scandal

16 July 2010

Ah, politics in Cape Town. The cynical allegiances. The bitter battles. The spy tapes and the scandals. A review of the city and province’s politicians over the past 15 years reads like the cast of characters in a Carl Hiaasen novel: the musical Peter Marais and Gerald Morkel who liked to lunch with Jurgen Harksen, [...]

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Teams with ‘foreign’ coaches never win World Cups – it’s a fact

28 June 2010

By ANDREW TRENCH The other day we were sitting watching a world cup game and wondering if the nationality of a team’s coach had any impact on the team’s performance. It’s hard to say that without appearing xenophobic but we had just witnessed a flurry of exists by teams who had non-nationals as the coach. [...]

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The Mercury gets it right for big Brazil-Portuguese clash

25 June 2010

Take a look at The Mercury’s great front page today in honour of the big Brazil-Portugal game that is taking place at 4pm in Durban. I love that masthead and Page 1 and 2 is completely in Portuguese (remember Brazilans speak Portuguese too) while Page 3 is back to English. (There are couple more special [...]

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How SA’s front pages handled the Bafana exit story: Pics

24 June 2010

It’s not often that I get to climb off my high horse but here goes, and I hope I manage it with some aplomb. Yesterday I had a frothy about a lack of personality at the Independent’s three morning newspapers (The Star, Cape Times and The Mercury) that all took the same line in their [...]

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The big Bafana game: Thumbs down for The Star, Cape Times and Mercury

23 June 2010

Notice anything about today’s front pages of The Star, Cape Times and The Mercury? They all played last night’s crucial Bafana World Cup game exactly the same! I know the papers’ owner, Independent Newspapers, has created a centralised subbing operation in order to contain costs in these straightened times but, bloody hell, where is the [...]

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The right call: Ilanga, City Press and M&G on MaNtuli affair

21 June 2010

Lucky for President Jacob Zuma and First Lady Nompumelelo Ntuli Zuma that the World Cup came along and shifted the country’s attention from the recent allegations of infidelity in the extended presidential household. Or perhaps the timing of that remarkable letter (claiming that MaNtuli, as she is known, had had an affair with a bodyguard [...]

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