Comments on the Sanef media audit: a new news culture is facing the media and journalism educators: the time to act is now!

This omnibus article deals with some of the comments received by the authors of the Sanef media audit (see p. 11) of the edition of Ecquid Novi). As Mark Deuze, one of the commentators puts it: The threats and challenges to contemporary journalism have caused scholars, publics, journalists, and thus journalism educators, to reconsider their approaches, definitions, roles, and function in community and society. Widely recognized as the four main changes or challenges facing education programmes in journalism are: the multicultural society; the rise and establishment of infotainment genres; the convergence of existing and new media technologies (cf. multimedia); and the internationalization or ‘glocalization’ of the media and journalism playing field. The four mentioned challenges and developments could be seen as reflected in the 2002 Sanef audit. The report particularly stresses the ‘new culture’ within which journalists are expected to do their work. This is a culture determined by fragmented audiences; a widening gap between journalists and their publics; and an increased need for quality information. It is also a culture of enhanced interactivity and media accountability; intercultural communication; recognition of cultural diversity; and dealing with ‘nonhierarchical’ management styles. Journalism education, in other words, is gearing up to face a tough challenge: keeping the best practices of the teaching context and practical skills courses on the one hand, and including cultural and critical reflective didactics on the other. This is not the traditional theory versus skills debate of old—this is definitely something ‘new’—as is clearly shown in the Sanef audit. In this respect the Sanef audit stands out for its discourse of emphasizing changes in journalism and news culture, rather than simply advocating more or less theory- or skills-based curricula

Riding the waves: Journalism education in post-apartheid South Africa

Since 1994, South African journalism education has undergone waves of introspection about curricula and methods of teaching as educators respond to the challenging realities of the post-apartheid environment. The most recent challenge to journalism educators is the student protests which started at the end of 2015, questioning the high costs of education and demanding “decolonization” of curricula. The traditional alignment with media companies has also been upended as the drastic contraction of newsrooms removes the promise of jobs upon graduation and the swiftly shifting digital terrain rearranges the financial basis of all journalism. These factors introduce a dynamism and uncertainty into South African journalism that educators are compelled to respond to with imagination and principle

Contextualising journalism education and training in Southern Africa

In this article it is argued that journalism education in Southern Africa must contend with defining a new academic identity for itself, extricating itself from dependency on Western oriented models of journalism education and training, as this has been a perennial challenge in most of Africa

Transforming the media: a cultural approach

The change from an Apartheid state to a liberal democratic one has wrought many changes at all levels of South African society: the economic, social, political, cultural. This paper explores the impacts of these changes on the South African print media industry, with a view to assessing their contribution to the development of a democratic citizenship. While acknowledging the constraining effects of economic structures of ownership, the paper locates these within the broader social and political context of post-apartheid South Africa. It thus attempts to synthesise elements of both a political economy and cultural approach to the analysis of cultural production