A lot of hounding the newshounds (or their editors to be more precise), and distilling readings and doings over the years, resulted in the publication last month of "The Extraordinary Editor. A handbook for South African media leaders" published by Sanef.

It covers managing yourself, people, money, content, publics ... and change. My co-editor Liz Barratt did a wonderful job with designer Shahn Irwin on the layout, and fun caricatures were done by Baba Tjeko. Our next stop: offering workshops on making the most of this resource.

At last! Grocott's Mail is taking the Makana Municipality to court over an advertising boycott. Former municipal manager Pravine Naidoo last year ordered the withdrawal of council advertising, accusing the newspaper of being "anti-transformation".

After lots of slog, a study of media law in ten African countries has seen the light of online day.

It's been a project of the Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies, under commission from UNESCO. It was launched during the Highway Africa conference in hard copy, and 200 have been sent out to African journalism schools so far.

The 39-year-old man suspected of posing as the male prostitute who blogged about having sex with prominent South Africans has appeared in a magistrate's court in Cape Town on charges of theft and crimen injuria*.
The crimen injuria complaint against Juan Duval Uys was lodged by Simon Grindrod, the Independent Democrats councillor. Grindrod's name had been used on an Afrikaans blog, which claimed he had had sex with a prostitute named Skye, who is now believed to be Uys.

Tanzania got hammered in my last post, about planning to register journalists. But lots of other African countries already do it, or have plans as well. Nigeria for instance uses the language of "fill out the prescribed forms". I wrote about this in my Converse column this week, setting out some of the arguments as to why the practice is abhorrent. Thank goodness the Inter-American Court of Justice long ago - in 1985 in fact - gave a definitive thumbs-down to registration: