"Overall, South Africa has a relatively vibrant and developing media environment. The 15 interviewees were involved in 37 media development initiatives between them. These development initiatives comprise the following: 12 training initiatives; nine advocacy initiatives; five research initiatives; t...hree training media initiatives; two legal support initiatives; one award initiative; one grant making initiative; one conference; and, one revenue stream generation initiative ... Through their experiences of designing, implementing and evaluating their media development initiatives, interviewees offer the following learning points regarding success. They stress the importance of strategic and long-term planning, of working with partners where possible, avoiding dependency on donors and taking the cultural context into account ... Interviewees praised media development initiative donors for starting to seek advice about the real needs on the ground. However, interviewees feel that donors are falling short in the following ways: the withdrawal of funding from South Africa; the duplication of initiatives; conducting the wrong training; only providing short-term funding; being too prescriptive; and, not providing for core costs. According to the participating media professionals, the strategic priorities for media development are media management training, community participation, specialised reporting training and media monitoring." (Summary & conclusions, p.99-100)
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"This handbook offers an insight into a set of investigative practices that will make your first steps into this exciting and demanding discipline, easier. You will find the elements that we consider to be the most important aspects of investigative journalistic work, along with numerous examples an...d case studies, additional reading material, data and exercises. Although the emphasis is placed on the experiences of journalists from the region, our collaboration with Sheila Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, ensures a wider perspective, tackling all of the basic principles of good investigative work. The book will take you through the very substance of investigative journalism, from the definition of what investigative journalism really is, and what it is not, through the investigative process itself and the set of techniques for following paper and people trails, interviewing and checking the legal implications of your work, and putting the article together. Although the best approach to this handbook is to read these chapters one by one in the order in which they are presented, you can also go directly to the parts that are of particular interest to you - this may be particularly relevant for the chapters that deal with investigative techniques and specific regional practices related to them." (Introduction)
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