History of the Nation

Judy Kibinge's latest film documents the birth and growth of East Africas largest media company The Nation Media Group over the past fifty years. It's a story about the Kenya, the events that made the news and the people behind the scenes who brought the news.

Big up Judy

Radikal by Serkan Ozkaya

And word in the NYT about his print projects here

Newspapers as Art: The making of Serkan Ozkaya's "Today Could Be A Day of Historic Importance"

The Making of TODAY COULD BE A DAY OF HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE from baris ozcetin on Vimeo.

Tech Killed the Kenyan Blog (Potash)

In 2006 when I discovered Kenyan blogs, I stopped reading newspapers. I used to skim in fact rather than read newspapers because what Kibaki and Raila do is not news, how it affects me is. And newspapers didn’t tell me that. I cannot blame them, they weren’t addressing me… my demographic. Some blogs did.

As a blogger, a lot of my writing then was very political. Political in the sense of: how a certain kind of Kenyan responds to and copes with the consequences of bad governance. It wasn’t about the shenanigans of the political class but the ways in which some of us responded to them. When the political class made a cameo appearance in my blog it was because I, or one of my peers, had enjoyed their largesse. A largesse that faded into the new harems, bellies, Benzos and numbered accounts of a Kibaki era noveau riche class. In the Moi days, I liked to point out, they shared the love. You could walk into town and take a matatu home with a slice of Goldenberg money.

Read it here

Award-Winning Newspaper Designs (Smashing Magazine)

By: Vitaly Friedman

El Economista (Madrid, Spain)
El Economista uses a very traditional, subtle and unique newspaper layout. Notice how well the typography reflects the weight of single articles. Infographics support the content and headlines are surrounded by huge amount of whitespace.





Äripäev (Tallinn, Estonia)
Äripäev’s signature is the heavy use of typography. The layout may sometimes seem overcrowded, however the packaging is always clean, simple to digest and easy to read. Note the difference in weights of colors: color, grey and red are applied carefully and sparingly.





De Morgen (Belgium)
De Morgen focuses on attractive packaging and a visually appealing layout. Vivid colors offer readers more eye-candy; however, they also have a function as they e.g. clearly separate quotations from the overall article. Headlines are centered, background-colors differ from page to page.





Politiken (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Politiken has a very eye-pleasing, legible layout with soft, neutral colors. Notice the clean horizontal packaging on the right-hand side image below. The sharpness of typography is breathtaking.




The Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw, Poland)
The Rzeczpospolita displays its conservatism in a traditional, conservative layout. No fancy images, no vivid background colors in use. The content dominates and helps the layout to gain a rather traditional look.





Le Monde (Paris, France)
Le Monde presents a mix of colorful infographics, solid typography and professional content…





Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt, Germany)
…so does the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszietung: the excerpts are distributed uniformly which gives the page a clear and easy-to-read and easy-to-scan structure. It’s not always possible, though.





Expresso (Portugal)
Expresso: with rich colors, clean grid-based layout and concise typography. Notice how the colors are applied and how the content is separated (see second screenshot).




The Guardian (London, UK)
The Guardian has recently finished its redesign. Result: more vivid colors and more vivid blocks. However, the legibility and the sharpness of presentation don’t suffer. A nice example of how multiple colors can be used not destroying the balance between visual appeal and legibility.






Dubai Express (Dubai, United Arab Emirates)
Dubai Express is another example of colorful yet legible layout design. The layout has 10 colors on one single page, used in different contexts in different colors. Note the sharpness of typography and use of capital letters on the front page. In this case color is definitely appropriate as the newspaper’s main topic is entertainment.





Mint (India)
Mint, financial daily in India, uses large indentation for typography and elegant visual highlights to separate the content. That works well: both attractive, scannable and easy-to-read.




St. Louis Post-Dispatch (US)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (US) isn’t a boulevard-newspaper, but a local regional magazine. The layout has a clear content hierarchy and a very simple structure. Huge amount of whitespace: waste of space or a clever technique to focus readers’ attention on the main topics?



Hartford Courant (US)
The Hartford Courant is a standout in the American newspaper market. The newspaper distinguishes itself with an enduring elegance in design and typography. Though conservative in their approach, designers engage readers with the bold use of visuals. The contrast between their quiet, understated style and the gutsy photography and illustrations create a tension that captures the attention of readers.




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A not white family in bed on a Sunday morning..., 1978 (David Goldblatt)

The Week That was

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The Politics of Fashion Journalism

By: Hywel Davies

In the ten years I have been working as a fashion journalist I have written a lot of rubbish. Opinions, it seems, aren’t always required in fashion journalism.

While all magazines editors claim to publish smart, provocative writing, it is well known that successful fashion magazines are driven by advertisers. In a highly competitive marketplace it is accepted that editorial is created to endorse the advertisers’ products.

Magazines that have a contentious point of view are increasingly sparse. The ‘there is always something to like,’ mentality and the current popularity of visually-led magazines, has placed the written opinion out of sync with the current zeitgeist.

Looking at the current crop of successful monthly and biannual fashion magazines, many resemble advertising catalogues (or 'magalogues'). Fashion shoots increasingly depict tip-to-toe looks from designers that are presented in orderly fashion on their own page. Are all consumers aware of this swindle, or is it just an accepted structure of a carefully constructed industry?

In my career there have been a few defining moments that have clarified my perceptions of the industry's need for reciprocal appreciation.



Working for Sleazenation magazine created a platform for ranting and forming opinions on the escalating power of advertising in fashion magazines. For the September 2001 issue a '100 Pages of Hypes And Lies' tag line straddled the cover, and was a stab at the bland cheerleading antics of other fashion glossies.

A pedigree PR commented: “beautiful image on the cover”; our swipe at the industry's preoccupation with hype clearly hadn't penetrated the PR's consciousness. The focus of this PR's delight was instead the irreverent perfume credit on the cover, which she gleefully read as positive appraisal of her client. The implication of this misinterpretation was clear: non-stick, opinion-free, glossy images are appropriate for an industry that is content to ignore judgements and instead focus on praise and mutual gratification. Unfortunately, advertisers who got the jibe stayed away and the magazine eventually folded.

Working for opinionated independent magazines invariably means little cash so the call from the mainstream is seductive. However, working in the commercial arena brings a whole different set of constraints.

I was commissioned to write a piece for a London-based women’s monthly glossy magazine on Amnesty International’s collaboration with Rankin, which was promoting their human rights campaign. My brief for the article was to avoid any politics and focus on the atmosphere of the shoot and document any gossip being traded between models. It was my last job for the magazine.

“You make the designer sound very dry, serious and quite political,” another fashion features director reprimanded me on a profile I had written for a future issue. The fact that the designer was brilliantly opinionated on contemporary issues did not fit with the mood of the new spring issue. My piece was cut to 200 words.

Thankfully then, there are newspaper journalists that, devoid of advertisers' influence, can write what they want, opinion and all. Or are there? Regrettably, the days of journalists being banned from shows for panning designers and their collections are, more or less, relegated to fashion history. Cathy Horyn of the New York Times recently highlighted instances of designers being so protective of their brand that they will, in extreme circumstances, give opinionated journalists the cold shoulder.

In fact, the hierarchical nature of fashion journalism does nothing to encourage free thinking. Journalists who are invited to shows are made to feel worthy of being part of the performance. Front row politics ensures writers are kept strictly in their (very visible) place. Those who brave honest reviews are often demoted to the cheap seats or, heaven forbid, are banned.

So who is to blame for the fashion media’s apparent lack of opinion? Is it the advertisers, the designers or the magazine editors themselves? Or is it us, the consumers that buy into it all? Fashion is a fascinating and luminous industry that thrives on new ideas. The communication of this revolutionary business should be matched in all its varied discussions. Fashion journalism shouldn't be about cheerleading. Surely vigorous, balanced debate can add another dimension to the surface gloss that currently exists.

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Weighing the Africa in South Africa

© Antoine de Ras

The morning papers on May 19 recorded a grim scene. A young Mozambican man was pictured on hands and knees, his body engulfed by flames. Set upon by a group of South African youths, the unidentified man had been stabbed and severely beaten before being set alight. Taken in Ramaphosa, an impoverished settlement east of Johannesburg, the photograph forms part of a mosaic of news photographs documenting the ruthless wave of attacks targeting African immigrants resident in South Africa’s townships.

Five days after the publication of the Ramaphosa photograph, the deceased man’s identity remained a mystery. On Friday May 23, Johannesburg’s The Star newspaper attempted to honour the man’s life with an obituary, of sorts. ‘They called him Mugza,’ read the front-page headline. The narration was sparse: the man had shared a shack with another Mozambican man, also murdered; the two had only recently arrived in the area. Accompanying the words was a new photograph. Taken four days after the attack, it showed a pair of shoes, a scattering of concrete blocks and a duvet heaped over a pile of burnt clothing, the latter belonging to the deceased. It was a devastating image, recalling Joel Sternfeld’s photograph of the Los Angeles roadside where Rodney King was beaten – even Roger Fenton’s famous study of a cannonball-strewn landscape in Crimea. Art-historical allusions and photographic doubling aside, what gave the photograph its real impact were the three schoolgirls in the distance. In one news report, it was claimed that school children in Alexandria (the Johannesburg township where the wave of xenophobic attacks first started) had laughed at terrified immigrants seeking shelter at police stations.

In his contribution to the South African edition of the ‘Africa Remix’ catalogue, published in 2007, Achille Mbembe, a Cameroonian social scientist and writer based in Johannesburg, makes a bold claim for his adopted city. A place of atrophying skyscrapers and recently constructed African head offices, of casinos, shopping malls and expensive sports cars, of levitating restaurants and electrified suburban compounds, Mbembe regards Johannesburg as ‘the centre of Afropolitanism par excellence’.

You don’t have to look too hard nowadays to see this newfangled word popping up in cultural criticism. (Holland Cotter, in his recent New York Times review of the pan-African group show ‘Flow’, currently on at the Studio Museum in Harlem, uses it.) But what does it mean? ‘Afropolitanism,’ writes Mbembe, ‘is not the same as Pan-Africanism or negritude. Afropolitanism is an aesthetic and a particular poetic of the world. It is a way of being in the world, refusing on principle any form of victim identity – which does not mean that it is not aware of the injustice and violence on the continent and its people by the law of the world.’

Johannesburg, with its multiple racial and ethnic legacies and globalised economy, argues Mbembe, is a model for African development. ‘It is where an ethic of tolerance is being created, likely to revive African aesthetic and cultural creativity, in the same way as Harlem or New Orleans once did in the United States.’ There is some substance in these words, notwithstanding the evidence of people and their homes being torched, of the displaced seeking refuge in churches, police stations and tented camps in Johannesburg, of busses hurriedly ferrying African nationals out of the continent’s richest city, away from a confused citizenry desperately grappling with the contradictions of a post-apartheid enlightenment. There is truth. The thing is, it is a fragile one and coexists with other truths. Perhaps this what energises and so haunts Mbembe’s writings, what makes Okwui Enwezor’s ongoing curatorial projects – so critical and engaging – also fraught with ambiguity.

In a recent interview, author Chinua Achebe spoke of the competing narratives that have come to define Africa. Rather than banish the news photographer, whose subject is suffering, this signal figure suggested that we allow the contradictory pictures to coexist, that Africans strive to uphold the worldliness and mobility so much a part of their everyday life and history – notwithstanding the reality of its multiple shadows. Which reiterates, rather than contradicts, what Mbembe is arguing, just differently.

Coexistent with this attempt to define a ‘theory’ of cosmopolitan enlightenment, the recent pogroms in South Africa point to other, more furtive realities at play. One of these deals centrally with money: South Africa is the dominant economic power in sub-Saharan Africa. Where money exists, so too do impoverished economic migrants and culture. (Just take a walk around contemporary London.) One spin-off of this somewhat reduced reading is that South Africa has become an important conduit for trading into Africa, economically, politically, even culturally. Fact: five South African artists appear on ‘Flow’ – no other country enjoys as prominent a representation.

I recently interviewed Clive Kellner, director of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, arguably the country’s foremost public institution, and put it to him that South Africa’s international successes have often been at the expense of Africa – more pointedly, that South Africa is a proxy for Africa. Lazy curators seeking to engage the continent visit South Africa, sleep and dine well, make a few easy selections, and fly back home, comfortable in the knowledge that Africa has somehow been represented. ‘Absolutely, I agree a lot,’ responded Kellner. ‘What happened with a lot of South African artists is that they entered these contemporary African shows, and then they get a gallery overseas, and then divorce themselves from South Africa and Africa – they just want to be international. Which is fine – labels are a problem – but there is a very particular process and trajectory they seem to go through.’

Which is not to gainsay the successes of South African artists internationally, nor to suggest that they are morally complicit in the xenophobic attacks. That would be plain ridiculous. But just like the ongoing debate about white South Africans and their debt to apartheid, the recent flare-up of xenophobia in the country highlights the very real debt that South Africans owe to Africa. It is a tangled debt, tied at once to anti-apartheid struggle history, current economics and, in this context, global art trends. Denying that any such debt is owed is tantamount to denying Mugza a name. It is a realization not lost on South Africans. On May 25, a Sunday, the country learnt that the 22-year-old man senselessly murdered in Ramaphosa had a name. He was Ernesto Nhmawavane.

Sean O’Toole

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Xenophobia - David Lachapelle

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All I Wanted for Christmas Was a Newspaper

Bloggers are no replacement for real journalists.

By PAUL MULSHINE
Newark, N.J.

Star-Ledger staff celebrate winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 (AP).

When my colleague at the Newark Star-Ledger John Farmer started off in journalism more than five decades ago, things were very different. After covering a political event, he'd hop on the campaign bus, pull out a typewriter, and start banging out copy. As the bus would pull into a town, he'd ball up a finished page and toss it out the window. There a runner would scoop it up and rush it off to a telegraph station where it would be blasted back to the home office.

At the time, reporters thought this method was high-tech. Now, thanks to the Internet, a writer can file a story instantly from anywhere. It's incredibly convenient, but that same technology is killing old-fashioned newspapers. Some tell us that that's a good thing. I disagree and believe that the public will miss us once we're gone.

Mr. Farmer, who is now the Star-Ledger's editorial page editor, retold his experience of the old days a short while ago at a wake of sorts for departing colleagues. The paper has been losing money and might have had to shut its doors sometime early next year. So the drivers' and mailers' unions made contract concessions, and about 150 nonunion editorial staff took buyouts as part of an effort by the publisher to save the paper.

The Star-Ledger is among the 15 largest newspapers in America, and it circulates in some of the most prosperous suburbs of New York City. We are perhaps alone among the major papers in devoting extensive coverage to small-town news and sports. We routinely get scoops on what the Steinbrenners are thinking about the Yankees. And in 2005, the paper won the Pulitzer Prize for its sober coverage of Democrat Gov. Jim McGreevey's resignation after his admission to an adulterous affair with another man.

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The problem is that printing a hard copy of a publication packed with solid, interesting reporting isn't a guarantee of economic success in the age of instant news. Blogger Glenn Reynolds of "Instapundit" fame seems to be pleased at this. In his book, "An Army of Davids," Mr. Reynolds heralds an era in which "[m]illions of Americans who were in awe of the punditocracy now realize that anyone can do this stuff."

No, they can't. Millions of American can't even pronounce "pundit," or spell it for that matter. On the Internet and on the other form of "alternative media," talk radio, a disliked pundit has roughly a 50-50 chance of being derided as a "pundint," if my eyes and ears are any indication.

The type of person who can't even keep track of the number of times the letter "N" appears in a two-syllable word is not the type of person who is going to offer great insight into complex issues. But the democratic urge expressed by Mr. Reynolds is not new. Someone is always heralding the rise of "the intellectual declaration of independence of the American people," as H.L. Mencken once put it.

In his 1920 essay "The National Letters," Mencken traced this sentiment back to the early days of our democracy. He noted how first Ralph Waldo Emerson and then Walt Whitman prophesized the rise of what Whitman termed "a class of native authors, literatuses, far different, far higher in grade than any yet known." Mencken was pessimistic about this prospect thanks to what he termed "the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes."

I share that pessimism. Every time a new medium arises, a new group of avatars arises with it, assuring us of the wondrous effects it will produce for our democracy.

I encountered this back in the early 1970s in my communications classes at Rutgers. Cheap, portable video cameras had just been invented, and I was assured by the bearded professors and grad students that these cameras would lead to a rebirth of democracy. The citizenry would start recording public meetings and the result would be a revolution.

Now we're hearing the same thing about the blogosphere. "When enough bloggers take the leap, and start reporting on the statehouse, city council, courts, etc. firsthand, full-time, then the Big Media will take notice and the avalanche will begin," Mr. Reynolds quotes another blogger as saying. If this avalanche ever occurs, a lot of bloggers will be found gasping for breath under piles of pure ennui. There is nothing more tedious than a public meeting.

After I got out of Rutgers, I began as a reporter at a newspaper in Ocean County, N.J. If the Toms River Regional Board of Education had not offered free coffee, I fear that I might have been found the next day curled up on the floor in the back of the room like Rip Van Winkle. As it was, I only made it through the endless stream of resolutions and speeches by employing trance-inducing techniques learned in my youth during religion class at St. Joseph's school up the street.

The common thread here, whether the subject is foreign, national or local, is that the writer in question is performing a valuable task for the reader -- one that no sane man would perform for free. He is assembling what in the business world is termed the "executive summary." Anyone can duplicate a long and tedious report. And anyone can highlight one passage from that report and either praise or denounce it. But it takes both talent and willpower to analyze the report in its entirety and put it in a context comprehensible to the casual reader.

This highlights the real flaw in the thinking of those who herald the era of citizen journalism. They assume newspapers are going out of business because we aren't doing what we in fact do amazingly well, which is to quickly analyze and report on complex public issues. The real reason they're under pressure is much more mundane. The Internet can carry ads more cheaply, particularly help-wanted and automotive ads.

So if you want a car or a job, go to the Internet. But don't expect that Web site to hire somebody to sit through town-council meetings and explain to you why your taxes will be going up. Soon, newspapers won't be able to do it either.

Over the past few weeks, I've watched a parade of top-notch reporters leave the Star-Ledger for the last time. The old model for compensating journalists is as obsolete as the telegraph. If anyone out there in the blogosphere can tell me what the new model is, I will pronounce him the first genius I've ever encountered on the Internet.

Mr. Mulshine is an opinion columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger.


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Flashback: May 19th, 2008

Burning The Welcome Mat



Monday, 19 May 2008
JOHANNESBURG, (IRIN) - The death toll in a wave of attacks targeting foreigners around South Africa's main city of Johannesburg has reportedly risen to 22, with an estimated 6,000 people seeking shelter in police stations, churches and community centres.

Police spokesperson Director Govindsamy Mariemuthoo was quoted in The Star newspaper as saying on Monday that the situation was calm in the townships of Alexandra, in northern Johannesburg, and Diepsloot, southwest of the city, where the attacks started last week.

However, the violence spread to Zandspruit, northwest of Johannesburg, and Tembisa, Primrose, Reiger Park and Thokoza, on the eastern perimeter of the city, as well as other working-class communities.

South African newspapers on Monday ran horrific images of people set alight by angry mobs who roamed townships during the weekend looking for foreigners and looting their shops and homes. In scenes reminiscent of anti-apartheid protest from the 1980s, the police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds.

In the Troyville area, just east of the central business district and historically a migrant enclave, shops were closed on Monday night and the usually busy streets were quiet. An estimated 2,000 people had taken refuge in the nearby Jeppe Street police station after violence at the weekend.

A police officer, who asked not to be named, told IRIN that he did not expect the violence to end anytime soon, and the station needed blankets and food to care for the foreign nationals - mainly Zimbabwean, Mozambican and Angolans - who were sheltering on the premises.

President Thabo Mbeki announced on Sunday that a panel had been set up to investigate the attacks, but the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), a constitutionally mandated watchdog, accused the government on Monday of failing to take the threat of xenophobia seriously.

SAHRC chief executive Tseliso Thipanyane was reported in newspapers as saying that the sudden outburst was the result of festering anger at poverty, a lack of resources, and the large influx of immigrants.

An estimated five million people from almost every country in Africa have migrated to South Africa; three million of these are thought to be Zimbabwean, but the Department of Home Affairs has no record of how many migrants might be undocumented.

They are perceived as taking jobs in an economy with an estimated unemployment rate of 40 percent, but in which there is also a serious skills shortage.

Not A New Problem

The following chronology looks back at the problem of xenophobia since South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994.

1994

• The Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) threatens to take "physical action" if the government fails to respond to the perceived crisis of undocumented migrants in South Africa.

• IFP leader and Minister of Home Affairs Mangosutho Buthelezi says in his first speech to parliament: "If we as South Africans are going to compete for scarce resources with millions of aliens who are pouring into South Africa, then we can bid goodbye to our Reconstruction and Development Programme."

• In December gangs of South Africans try to evict perceived "illegals" from Alexandra township, blaming them for increased crime, sexual attacks and unemployment. The campaign, lasting several weeks, is known as "Buyelekhaya" (Go back home).

1995

• A report by the Southern African Bishops' Conference concludes: "There is no doubt that there is a very high level of xenophobia in our country ... One of the main problems is that a variety of people have been lumped together under the title of 'illegal immigrants', and the whole situation of demonising immigrants is feeding the xenophobia phenomenon."

1997

• Defence Minister Joe Modise links the issue of undocumented migration to increased crime in a newspaper interview.

• In a speech to parliament, Home Affairs Minister Buthelezi claims "illegal aliens" cost South African taxpayers "billions of rands" each year.

• A study co-authored by the Human Sciences Research Council and the Institute for Security Studies reports that 65 percent of South Africans support forced repatriation of undocumented migrants. White South Africans are found to be most hostile to migrants, with 93 percent expressing negative attitudes.

• Local hawkers in central Johannesburg attack their foreign counterparts. The chairperson of the Inner Johannesburg Hawkers Committee is quoted as saying: "We are prepared to push them out of the city, come what may. My group is not prepared to let our government inherit a garbage city because of these leeches."

• A Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) survey of migrants in Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe shows that very few would wish to settle in South Africa. A related study of migrant entrepreneurs in Johannesburg finds that these street traders create an average of three jobs per business.

1998

• Three non-South Africans are killed on a train travelling between Pretoria and Johannesburg in what is described as a xenophobic attack.

• In December The Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign is launched by a partnership of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), the National Consortium on Refugee Affairs and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

• The Department of Home Affairs reports that the majority of deportations are of Mozambicans (141,506) followed by Zimbabweans (28,548)

1999

• A report by the SAHRC notes that xenophobia underpins police action against foreigners. People are apprehended for being "too dark" or "walking like a black foreigner". Police also regularly destroy documents of black non-South Africans.

• Sudanese refugee James Diop is seriously injured after being thrown from a train in Pretoria by a group of armed men. Kenyan Roy Ndeti and his room mate are shot in their home. Both incidents are described as xenophobic attacks.

• In Operation Crackdown, a joint police and army sweep, over 7,000 people are arrested on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. In contrast, only 14 people are arrested for serious crimes.

• A SAHRC report on the Lindela deportation centre, a holding facility for undocumented migrants, lists a series of abuses at the facility, including assault and the systematic denial of basic rights. The report notes that 20 percent of detainees claimed South African citizenship or that they were in the country legally.

2001

• According to the 2001 census, out of South Africa's population of 45 million, just under one million foreigners are legally resident in the country. However, the Department of Home Affairs estimates there are more than seven million undocumented migrants.

2004

• Protests erupt at Lindela over claims of beatings and inmate deaths, coinciding with hearings into xenophobia by SAHRC and parliament's portfolio committee on foreign affairs.

2006

• Cape Town's Somali community claim that 40 traders have been the victims of targeted killings between August and September.

• Somali-owned businesses in the informal settlement of Diepsloot, outside Johannesburg, are repeatedly torched.

2007

• In March UNHCR notes its concern over the increase in the number of xenophobic attacks on Somalis. The Somali community claims 400 people have been killed in the past decade.

• In May more than 20 people are arrested after shops belonging to Somalis and other foreign nationals are torched during anti-government protests in Khutsong township, a small mining town about 50km southwest of Johannesburg.

• According to the International Organisation of Migration, 177,514 Zimbabweans deported from South Africa pass through their reception centre across the border in Beitbridge since its opening in May 2006.

2008

• In March human rights organisations condemn a spate of xenophobic attacks around Pretoria that leave at least four people dead and hundreds homeless.


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What It's All About

In my lifetime I've seen a lot of things die: cassette tapes, VCR players, telephone books, skorts.

And soon, after a long convalescence, newspapers will probably join this list.

Why then, you might ask, would we want to make a newspaper? Why invest our time in a dying form? In the words of the EIC, the concept behind this project is to affirm the newspaper form while at the same time challenging it fundamentally. The end product will be a mix between literature and journalism. Part fact and part fiction. It'll be situated in a specific time and place, May 11-18, 2008/South Africa, in an effort to examine the xenophobic attacks from other angles than those previously explored.

Ultimately, the goal "is not to produce a newspaper but to propose a newspaper. To rethink it conceptually, by taking the newspaper infrastructure and putting it in the hands of artists."

This will be an epic task. We've started the Newsroom blog to document the process.