Considering the Future of Journalism Education across the region

In mid-November regional SAMIP participants Namibia Media Trust and CITE partnered with MISA Malawi and DW Akademie to host a 3-day hybrid conference on Journalism Education in Southern Africa. Themed Digital Disruptions: Crafting Journalism Education for Viable Media the conference was held on consecutive days in Windhoek, Bulawayo and Lilongwe with sessions streamed on zoom and Facebook. Academics and media experts weighed in on topics ranging from podcasting and Tiktok for newsrooms to political disinformation and digitalising newsrooms for survival. You can watch the recordings on the youtube channels of the NMT and CITE

Building global media business connections 

Volume, Seen, Scrolla and Food for Mzansi were among the 22 global media startups selected to attend the Global Media Congress in Abu Dhabi, UAE in mid-November. The conference, which attracted close to 15 000 delegates, offered a platform to facilitate business connections globally and showcased products crucial to the evolving media industry. The SAMIP startups exhibited in a dedicated area where they interacted with delegates and potential investors.

The Gathering to find the solutions

This November marked the return of Daily Maverick’s flagship event, The Gathering, held at the Cape Town Convention Centre and streamed online. With the tagline of ‘Because every problem has a solution,’ the Gathering2022 was designed to inspire hope and action with the line-up of top experts in politics, business and civil society tasked with tabling solutions on how to build the South Africa we want and deserve. Topics covered energy and Eskom, the economy, pandemic preparation, organised crime, the role of civil society and political will. The audience could join the conversation by sending questions to the moderators and live chat with fellow attendees on the conference platform. As with all Daily Maverick content the virtual conference was available to all for free.

Women Voices of 2022 recognises women+ finding the spotlight

A queer consciousness blogger, a disabled writer/sex worker advocate and a PhD candidate working to disrupt faith-based narratives around gender and sexualities: these are just three of the experts recognised by Quote This Woman+ in its inaugural Voices of the Year awards. Research indicates that women’s voices are only a quarter of those featured in the South African media so the awards set out to recognise women+ who go the extra mile to ensure that the most marginalised voices are given a chance to be amplified through media platforms. You can read the winner profiles here

Training masterclasses for Africa’s top investigative journalists

SAMIP participants shared their expertise and showcased some of their groundbreaking work at this year’s African Investigative Journalism Conference (AIJC), held on the Wits University campus in early November, and several shared their skills in training masterclasses. Paul McNally from Volume/Alibi Investigations outlined how to produce an investigative podcast and Daneel Knoetze from Viewfinder presented on how to analyse and interpret data and generate impact using their Police Accountability Tracker as a case study. The Media Hack Collective team presented masterclasses at the IJ pre-conference hosted by Norwegian non-profit SKUP and offered four hands-on sessions as part of the conference’s training stream, including how to use technology to do better journalism, how to make custom maps for journalists who can’t code and a gentle introduction to using data in your reporting. They also put together this great overview on the value of digging data, featuring comments from some of the key AIJC speakers.