“We must refuse to use the master’s tools”
Spotlight
About this page
Never in history has it been so easy to accumulate information. A vast sea of stories flows ceaselessly through the devices at our fingertips. But some days I feel I am drowning in data that does not help me understand the world any better.
Edward R Murrow’s warning about TV in 1958 could just as well be applied to all our modern information sources:
“This instrument can teach. It can illuminate and, yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it towards those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box.”
It is what we do with the information at our disposal that determines our destiny.
I once had a news editor when I worked on a small broadsheet newspaper in Cape Town who would cut me down to size by reminding me that my feverish efforts at storytelling would soon be “fish n’chips wrapper”. Undeterred I sat at my Olivetti typewriter for hours until I was happy with the stories.
In 2014 when we launched The Journalist we had a section called News. Our aim was and is to explore the meaning behind the lights and wires. To avoid at all costs becoming electronic ‘fish n’chips wrapper’.
Since then, we have chosen to rework this section of our website and in line with our updated approach it is called SPOTLIGHT. It is a name that evokes images of performers plucked out of the darkness of the stage and bathed in light so that the audience can revel in their artistry.
Spotlight will feature the artistry of our finest writers. Their brief will be simple. Don’t merely tell us what happened. Help us understand why.
If you have an idea for a Spotlight story please engage in the discussion or use the Contact Us page to write and let us know what you are thinking.
If we are indeed the end result of all the stories we’ve heard, as Tim Knight says, choose carefully. The Journalist is committed to help you make that choice and to shed light on the 21st Century clutter.
Face to face with the Penny Sparrows in the realty business
Journalist relates her own experience with racism
The speech that won’t go away
Address by Stellenbosch University Alumnus demands deep reflection – and action
UJ joins The Journalist
The department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg has joined The Journalist. It joins the founding university, the University of the Free State, in its efforts to draw the stories of neglected journalism pioneers into the public eye. Both universities will continue to seek ways to incorporate the substantial story of South African journalism into the curricula. The site will also work to serve as a knowledge bank for experienced journalist to provide...
Our banking and monetary system is toxic
100% money system advocated
World economic order under the spotlight
Inequality has reached obscene levels
The stories that captured readers’ attention
The Journalist’s most read pieces of 2015
Earliest known biography of an African woman translated to English for the first time
Ethiopian noblewoman Walatta Petros left her husband to stop the spread of Roman Catholicism, possibly fell in love with a fellow nun and was elevated to sainthood.
Healing our wounds through story-telling
The Publisher of The Journalist, Zubeida Jaffer’s keynote address at the Vodacom Journalism Awards 2015
Leslie Sehume: Neglected by history
Lifetime Achiever Award for pioneer journalist
Emmy for Miners Shot Down doccie
Miners Shot Down. Rehad Desai talks to The Journalist
Final Edition for 2015
Looking ahead to the future…
Leaked language report: UFS sets the record straight
Council to decide next week
#FeesMustFall: A tale of two Witses – one for the rich, another for the poor
Wits University is made up of two separate and distinct universities – one for the rich and another for the poor – and university management is complicit in maintaining this dichotomy, writes SRC president SHAEERA KALLA. Students at Wits are currently preparing for their end of year exams. Many will pass and excel, some will […]
The disgusting hierarchy of who is mourned
Othering not unusual, including in the media
When will campus violence fall?
Several outbreaks in the last week
Revealing Uncomfortable Truths
De-colonializing higher education: A challenge to academic scholarship
The student who ripped into Helen Zille
Do not touch me
Financial stress distracts university students from academic success
The #feesmustfall student movement in South Africa has garnered a great deal of popular support. It has its critics, too. They have suggested that the country’s government and its universities simply can’t afford the free tertiary education students are demanding as their right. These critics and those who have proliferated on social media miss an important point. Students […]
Monrovia Mayor led life and death battle against Ebola
Liberian women played central role in struggle against the virus
Post-Ebola Women’s Groups Need Funding: Opinion
Taking on new roles as primary breadwinners & family heads
Protests and state violence
“Failure by police to comply with the law is the rule, not exception”
Students co-edit Cape Argus
A ground-breaking initiative
Students Brutalised: At the seat of Democracy
Lured into Parliament then attacked
About Us
The Journalist is a ground-breaking media project that provides history and context for key issues facing South African journalists. The Journalist is an independent, not for profit organisation working with the academic community and a range of credible online entities to make knowledge more accessible to the wider public. We don’t only tell you what happened. We help you understand why.
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Republish Articles
We want our stories spread far and wide. Feel free to republish our articles, but please credit our writers and authors and credit The Journalist at the top or bottom of the article complete with a hyperlink back to the site.
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