My biggest response yet on thoughtleader.co.za has been on a posting about the Forum of Black Journalists. 2000 views and 48 comments.

And most of them - surprise - disagree with my focus. The concern, from their responses, is race. Not secrecy.

MR DELIVERY: dividing the pizza pie for students

Tips for tender young economics journalists. That's what was on the menu at a lunch today when Reg Rumney passed on advice to ten JMS students studying on scholarships from the SA Reserve Bank and Reuters.

Rumney is a veteran of reporting the budget, and is now he is bringing his expertise to education and training in his new capacity as director of the new Centre for Economics Journalism in Africa, at Rhodes journalism.

His pointers were:

* you have to find a new angle - what's different about this budget;

Not rest & recreation, but rights and responsibilities. For cops and correspondents. Like exists in New York:

Jumpy police are jumping on South African reporters and photojournalists all too often these days. Last week the Sowetan, last year, Grocott's Mail, and yet others in between.

Here's my contribution to a Charter of rights and responsibilities:

Former SAfm honcho, Steve Lang, has emigrated to Grahamstown, leaving the Jo'burg congestion and conglomerates behind.

He's going to head up Grocott's Mail, continuing the balancing act of serving the town with a great paper and providing students a real lab experience of print journalism.

While the scale of SABC meant that hiring someone took at least 6 months, through various HR levels of bureaucracy, his new base does not have the luxury of a single personnel officer.

Press freedom provides both the oxygen of democracy and the laughing gas of infotainment and commercial exploitation. So begins a 2005 article by Karol Jakubowicz.

Central and Eastern Europe, he says, had some rude awakenings after their 1989 changes: