Five things you need to know about SA today

1. If you’re wondering what SA’s richest  bachelor Mark Shutlleworth is up to, IOL’s got an extensive interview with him from London. Ubuntu is now apparently used by about 10 million people, he’s contemplating running a marathon and, yes, he’s still single. Click here to read.

2. Meanwhile, Business Report’s Ann Crotty attended the beleagured Independent Empire’s AGM in Dublin. Gavin O’Reilly, the chief executive of Independent News & Media, which owns the Independent newspapers in SA, tried to be sketchy as possible about the group’s financial troubles and says there have been no offers to buy the London newspapers. The stakes are high. The company’s financial freeze expires on June 26 and if the parties fail to reach an agreement before then, the financiers could force a liquidation. Click here to read at IOL.

3. IOL definitely has the most interesting stories of the day. Read this one about two photographers filming the sardine run and having a narrow escape after getting separated from their boat.

4.David Bullard’s got a funny column about the Ponzi scheme at the Richmark Sentinel, which has one of the most unusual designs in the SA blogosphere. Also the grandest name! It isn’t the role of the courts to protect people against their own stupidity, says Bullard, so instead of pillorying Barry Tannenbaum for his nifty scheme, perhaps we should be demanding he receive a government rescue package. Click here to read,

5. And if, like me, you still don’t know what exactly the Confed Cup is, don’t despair.  You are niether stupid nor ignorant. Chris Moerdyk has a column saying the event is essentially unmarketable. Any big sporting event needs three ingredients, he says. It has to be relevant. It has to be desirable. And most of all it has to be affordable. Click here to read Moerdyk at News24.

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Five things you need to know about SA today

1. Boy, are temperatures are running high at the SABC. An email sent out at the weekend by a group of anonymous SABC “honest reporters”  says there are plan afoot to hold a shop stewards’ meeting “which would enable it to compile a comprehensive “action” report on each instance of  (SABC) mismanagement”. Says the email:

These dedicated broadcasters are now seeing their stirling efforts sabotaged on a daily basis by deployees of sinister gangs, whose drive to enrich a select few will stop at nothing. Incompetent girlfriends of deployees abound, and they abuse their “SABC given authority” to enslave their subordinates. “They are no more that cheap call girls. Some can’t even read or write, but the men who hired them – using your licence fee – advise them to be dictatorial with questioning servants,” said one union official.

Yislaak!  If it’s legit, there must be mnay revolutionary mutterings in the canteen. They say they will reveal themselves in due course and are looking for support from others in the media. Read the full email here and show your support by emailing honestreporter@gmail.com.

2. Rather timeously, veteran marketing and media writer Chris Moerdyk has written a good analysis at New24 of how the SABC’s mandate is totally unachievable and why it’s destined to fail. Read it here.

3. David Bullard is upping the ante as his court date with the Sunday times approaches. His latest column at the Richmark Sentinel, which goes out on a Sunday, is a laugh and a half, with him taking umbrage at making a list of SA intellectuals compiled by The Weekender. He says:

I may be many things…..cigarette scrounger, drunk, bottom pincher, Bonzo Dog fan even…..but don’t ever dare call me an intellectual. As Charles Bukowski said “An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.

Hear, hear! He also challenges other hacks who made the list, his former Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya and Business Day columnist Xolela Mangcu, to a debate at Constitution Hill. Loser buys the drinks. Read the full piece here.

4. Also in media land, Avusa announced it has appointed a public editor, one of the recommendations made last year by Anton Harber’s team invited to look into problems at the Sunday Times and make recommendations. He is Thabo Leshilo, the former editor-in-chief of Sunday World and the Sowetan.  In April, Harber wrote that the Sunday times hadn’t “largely ignored” the recommendations so maybe they’ve dusted  the document off and are implementing things. I hope so. When The Sunday Times published the findings, I was shocked by how disfunctional the news room seemed to have become and how unhappy the hacks obviously are. Read the Avusa announcement here.

5. And outside media land, that controversial Wild Coast toll road is on again. Read the Dispatch story here. It’s sure to get howls of protests again though I must say I’m with the government on this one. As much as the environmentalists and surfers would like to keep the Wild Coast pristine, the people of the Transkei desperately need more infrastucture and money coming into the area — and that starts with roads.

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Nic Dawes, the new M&G editor, has replied to Biz Community’s Chris Moerdyk on the paper’s decision to put a copy of a satire doccie up on its website after the SABC censored it (twice, let’s not forget).

It’s well worth a read and an interesting insight into the issues around this little poser: does the public interest outweigh the copyright issue and remember, the SABC, is so miffed that it has charged the M&G with theft.

Moerdyk says he believes it was theft as the SABC clearly owns the doccie even though they have chosen not to screen it. Dawes, however, says it’s not as it’s a digital copy of the original and that the commercial crimes unit told the M&G this week that they themselves were not sure if the paper was charged with theft or fraud.

On the copyright issue, Dawes says the public interest far outweighs the copyright issue and that there is precedence for this in both the UK and SA courts. I must say I’d be interested to hear what the SA precedent  is, Nic.
Click here to read Dawes’s reply, which links to Moerdyk’s original column.

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