At the African Media Leadership Conference, I was asked to speak on the topic: "'Broad Market'" journalism training is dead;welcome journalism training for specific media clients".

Here's the irony: talking to a broad audience about general principles - and trying to achieve specific value for each person...

Another irony: it's not the audience (jointly or singly) who benefits most from training; the most learning is done by the trainer.

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.

The first-ever World Journalism Education Congress kicked off in Singapore today, with people from more than 40 countries taking part, and some 28 journalism educators assocations. It’s being hosted by the Asia Media Information Centre .

Not many Africans here, excepting me, Prof Fackson Banda and Jeanne du Toit from Rhodes, Arrie de Beer, Elanie Steyn, Thalyta Swanepoel (all South African), Ignatius Kapoli (Tanzania), John Mukela (NSJ Mozambique) and Ralph Akinfeleye (Nigeria).

This refers to my research articles on the subject

African Media Markets, a presentation for a workshop in Germany, Money Matters: how independent media manage to survive 15-16 September 2006. Text version