Joe Thloloe and Rhodes VC, Saleem Badat

My RSS feed accurately reflected this headline "R40m to turn govt paper into daily" (see below), prompting two thoughts:

1. WTH ... is government now escalating its mouthpiece to a daily?
2. That's damn cheap if that's the case...

Clicking on the actual story showed the screw-up (See the first para). So the headline reflects a sub asleep on the job, I guess. Cheapo subbing.

Outside the Port Elizabeth city hall is a sculpture telling how the Portuguese spent 300 years searching for the elusive Prester John, a mythical Christian king. Inside, the hall, in the basement, a handful of people debated this Monday in search of the perfect system for press self-regulation. Hopefully, a less futile quest!

Ten days ago, South Africa's political and press logics led to collision and polarisation, plus some unconvincing (at least to opposing sides) game playing. The result was high level rhetoric, intolerance, deadlock and distrust. Understanding this history helps us explain why its changing, and what the prospects are. That's my paper (draft) for a conference on Media, Politics and Public, convened by the Axess Programme on Journalism and Democracy in Stockholm, 22 October.

With a myriad experiences out there, what can South Africa learn in regard to reform (or replacing) the press self-regulatory system?
In order to avoid ad hoc or opportunistic borrowing, I devised a system. It's a tripartite test that focuses on (a) Matching our situ to a source context and purpose, (b) Abstracting a general model, and (c) Destination fitness analysis. (or M.A.D if you want an easy acronym).
It was a useful exercise that informed my submission to the Press Council's self review.