Thought Leader publishes the occasional brain fart

Matthew Buckland, who co-founded Mail & Guardian Online’s blog aggregator, Amatomu, and group blog, Thought Leader (but who recently left the M&G to take up the position of General Manager for Publishing and Social Media at 24.com), wrote recently that the best model for citizen journalism was “user-generated content (UGC) with controls from a closed or select group of writers”.

“The key to harnessing user-generated content is combining it with a traditional media editorial model. It’s a way media can delve into the world of citizen media but still retain quality assurance. The creation of the Mail & Guardian Online’s Thought Leader blog platform (www.thoughtleader.co.za) has been an example of this very theory in practice.”

He also said that media “should not be ashamed at being ruthless about only publishing quality content”.

“For example, racist, sexist content in the form of articles or comments, or even comments considered “stupid” should be deleted with extreme prejudice.” [my emphasis]

However, it appears that the Editors at Thought Leader aren’t always ruthless and, occasionally, they publish a brain fart. My colleague, Gareth van Onselen, discusses an extreme example in the guest post that follows:

What happened to Thought Leader’s Quality Control?

By: Gareth van Onselen

How do you identify a poor piece of writing?

Video: Save Our Scorpions submissions to Parliament

The upshot of our ‘Save Our Scorpions’ viral campaign: 2000 written submissions and 98000 signatures on the various petitions (online, sms and hardcopy). Here’s a video clip of DA safety and security spokesperson Dianne Kohler Barnard handing them over at the Portfolio Committee on Safety and Security:

more about “Save Our Scorpions submissions to Par…“, posted with vodpod

As IOL reports, this follows a number of recent polls suggesting that support for the retention of the Scorpions is high.  

Mixed metaphors and muddled minds

Having recently written a post about bad grammar versus evolving grammar, I had to share a few corkers from a post my colleague, Gareth van Onselen, wrote on Inside Politics about the vicious circle of poor language and poor reasoning.

The post provides quite a detailed critique of the language used by Sunday Independent journalist, Edwin Naidu. For my part, I merely want to share a selection of some of his particularly bizarre turns of phrase.

As Van Onselen notes:

“A good test of any metaphor is to imagine what it would look like as a picture. If it is a mixed metaphor, or confused in any way, the picture one conjures up will be bizarre and, most likely, humorous which, if that is not your intention, will have the effect of distracting from the central narrative, undermining the strength of the argument and, ultimately, lowering one’s opinion of that particular piece of writing.”

So, for a laugh, try to imagine how Zapiro or Tony Grogan might illustrate each of these

Who’s negative – the DA or the media?

There’s a contention that pops up in the media from time to time – usually on the editorial and opinion pages – that the Democratic Alliance is too negative – that it only criticises and never offers its own solutions. It is never presented as the central thesis of a substantiated argument (that would be difficult, I would argue); rather, it is almost always a throw-away line – a cliché even. But does it hold up to scrutiny?

Fortuitously, Mandy de Waal published an interview with Media Tenor SA CEO Wadim Schreiner on Thought Leader yesterday that provides excellent background for this post. Among other things, it looks at how the media’s agenda setting plays a role in how politicians and political parties (or any institution or personality, for that matter – Cape Judge President John Hlophe is another case in point) are represented and perceived.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is certainly a straight-talking, no-nonsense, critical opposition, and unapologetic about it. It’s also what the overwhelming majority of our supporters, as well as a significant proportion of voters who don’t yet vote for the DA, want from us.

In market research we recently commissioned, voters were asked whether they thought the DA was too critical, not critical enough, or just about right. Only 32 % of black voters – the market in which the DA needs to gain support in order to grow – think the DA is too critical; 15 % think we are not critical enough; and 39 % think we get our criticism just about right (margin of error of 2%). Among white voters – the majority of the DA’s current support base – 58 % think the DA is not critical enough; a further 36 % think we get it just about right. Only 2 % think we are too critical.

But the DA is by no means only critical. It also offers analysis of the numerous challenges the state faces – the better to identify the root of problems – and proposes solutions to many of those problems. This is something that all voters – regardless of who they voted for, or intend to vote for – want from an opposition party.

Xenophobic attacks – how can I help victims?

The focus of this post is very much about what ordinary South Africans and civil society organisations are doing to assist refugees in the wake of the xenophobic attacks – and how and where you can help – but I would like to start by saying that, like most South Africans, I have been horrified and ashamed of the brutal attacks on foreigners across the country.

The attacks are by a small minority of malcontents; the majority of South Africans – including many who are extremely frustrated and disillusioned with the government’s poor service delivery and the lack of job opportunities – abhor the violence.

And while the government is certainly guilty of providing fertile ground for the discontent and resentments that are at the root of the violence, and have been very slow to react appropriately, the perpetrators of the attacks still had a choice. They must be held accountable for the choice they made.

At the same time, I have been heartened by the outpouring of support, both moral and material, by many South Africans. The DA, too, has commended the numerous heroes who have come to the aid of the victims of these attacks. Millions of Rands have been donated, and many are contributing in whatever way they can. Independent Newspapers has opened an account specifically for people to make donations, while the SA Red Cross Society has launched an emergency appeal to raise R1 million to assist the victims of xenophobic attacks.

The Cape Times has also been running a column alongside their other coverage of the attacks with the details of a number of organisations that are assisting. Having failed to find anything similar online, I thought I would re-publish it here (Update: I’ve added a few Gauteng-based links at the end):

IOL enhances DA story with embedded Zoopy video

I was quite impressed to see a Zoopy video embedded in an IOL story on the DA’s notice of motion to dissolve Parliament. Zoopy interviewed DA parliamentary leader Sandra Botha ahead of her reply to the President’s State of the Nation Address, and posted the video only an hour or two before the IOL story on her speech was published.

The interesting thing is that, in this context, Zoopy is both competitor and service provider to IOL. The video serves as a news report in its own right. But I think it also adds value to the IOL story. It’s win, win. For us too from www.zoopy.com posted with vodpod