Moving on…

I’m moving on to a new URL and a new design and will be posting from www.jackiebischof.com from today. The site has all the old content from this blog.

See you there!

An about turn on Twitter

I’m happy to say that the journalism.co.za Twitter profile is thriving, and I’ve had a lot of fun maintaining it. As jocoza is for a very niche audience (news and analysis for journalists in Southern Africa) the number of users can be low but the quality of conversation and exchange is relevant and lively.

Power Reporting: The African Investigative Conference

My latest project for Wits Journalism has involved setting up a blog and Twitter account for the Power Reporting conference taking place from Nov 1 to Nov 3 at Wits University.

I managed to find a great free design on WordPress (yay for free blogging platforms!) and have had fun filling it with content … not so much chasing down people to submit content! I’m also getting more and more into the potential of Twitter and have started using it more frequently to send out notices and info for jocoza (@Journ_SA) and now for the conference (@PowerReporting). The accounts have different purposes, which makes tweeting interesting. Jocoza’s Twitter feed is more about the latest news and analysis pieces on the site, awards and opportunities and information sharing and gathering, while Power Reporting is obviously tied to the event and the tweets are more really more light in content and fleeting. It changes the way you tweet as well as the general flow of information shared, depending on the goal of the account.

It’s been quite a bit of fun and the next project will be doing something similar for the Wits Justice Project … this will also have a unique twist on it because it is a reporting project with long-term assignments that will need updates. There’s a lot of potential for multimedia in the assignments (audio slideshows, videos etc) and it should be interesting getting that content.

Why aren’t there more hours in the day?!

German fans celebrate in Johannesburg

My latest post for The New York Times ‘Goal’ blog was from the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg, during Germany’s 4-0 win over Argentina.

German Community in Jo’burg Delights in Team’s Performance

Some pics from the day:

German fans celebrate their team's 4-0 win over Argentina

A little boy peeks over a foosball table (the regular man's football pitch during the WC, they're scattered all over malls and centres in Johannesburg) in "The Trailer Park" installation at the Goethe Institute

A faux-seaside setting with pimped out trailers provides an innovative setting for the public to watch the football

Sadly I’ll miss the next major exhibition by the Institute, “X Homes,” which will have 14 international and local artists guiding participants through houses in Kliptown and Hillbrow, exposing them at 8-minute intervals to performances pieces or works of art. The aim of the exhibition is to counter the perception of the area as places of high crime; to expose people to the more positive aspects of the area, such as the four star hotel in Kliptown.

American soccer fandom alive and kicking

I'm not sure I want to know where those feathers are from ...

Let it never be said that Americans do not take their sports seriously. Even soccer! The fans supporting the U.S. team in Pretoria on June 23 were passionate, intense, involved throughout the game and incredibly excited about the win. Sadly, some were also rude, drunk, fond of cursing and eager to spray beer over the crowd when the U.S. scored a goal in the 91st minute.

It was fantastic to be at the game but I had mixed feelings about the crowd. I’m not a fan of crowds to begin with, and even less of a fan of people using a sporting event as an excuse to get rowdy and forget all the rules of civilized behavior. But this is the World Cup, and of course people are going to get insanely excited during games, so it’s tough to criticize. Prior to the game I went with an American journo to check out a gathering of U.S. fans at a local restaurant in Pretoria. It was quite early in the afternoon and the crowd was drinking quite a bit and hanging their arms around each other, singing golden-oldies with the lyrics changed for the occasion – as one tends to do before games. However some of the fans seemed to have lost their sense of personal space – I got slightly knocked about in the crowd – and they seemed very fond of inserting expletives into their songs, ruining the effects in my mind!

My friend explained to me that a small portion of the fan base likes to use the matches as an excuse to get a bit out of control, and often support for the U.S. team provides a good reason to express extreme patriotism and national pride in a way that Americans haven’t really been able to in the last ten years overseas. But the majority of the fan base are proud, polite and ardent supporters of the team, while a minority are an American version of British soccer hooligans!

All that being said, U.S. v. Algeria was the only game I attended when I was actually in the crowd, with the fans, so this post could probably apply to almost any team.

I really hope the U.S.  improves its game and advances – and that their nicer fan base is there to support them all the way.

And in other news, happily, another post for The New York Times Goal blog! South Africans Vow to Continue Celebration

Football Fringes

The spirit is everywhere, especially on the roads!

Squirreled away in the media centre in Eldorado Park, I haven’t really been able to experience much of the excitement around the 2010 FIFA World Cup directly, but even from a distance the excitement is infectious. Today is the opening ceremony and match between South Africa and Mexico and I woke up to the sounds of vuvuzelas at around 6am this morning. On the way to Soccer City I passed fans with meticulously decorated cars and wide smiles on their faces  making their way to the game – five hours early!

It’s an Interesting World: 6

Quote of the week: “I just feel, I’m free. When the birds sing, when the nature is making some beautiful noise. You can rest and think and just feel free and happy” — participant in the Beyond Expectations project on a hike through Table Mountain.

The project takes young kids on nature trips, providing them with a temporary escape from their troubled circumstances.  Learn more about the project on their website, Beyond Expectations, and watch the kids experience the not-for-sissies hike up Table Mountain in a film produced by Butterfly Films. They have a number of other fantastic short films worth watching.

I would never want to be on this site: MediaFail collects user-submitted suggestions of wide-ranging failures by the press, and was cited by The New York Times media blog, Media Decoder as allowing users to “give a virtual thumbs-up (or in this case, thumbs-down) to external articles and videos. Users can add links to articles and leave comments, but most just vote.” The site is run by Washington D.C.-based activist group Free Press.

Fast bytes

I’ve been lucky enough to have two pieces published this month:

A feature on women’s soccer in South Africa for Women’s eNews:

South Africa’s Women Soccer Readies for Fall Games

And an opinion piece on the level of digital media participation by people in developing countries with limited Internet access or expensive bandwidth, kindly hosted by my boss, Dean Wright, at his Reuters.com blog Full Disclosure.

Local takes on a global media revolution

It’s been a year since I graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism – it’s sad to me how fast time goes, but my spirits are lifted by the truly incredible work of this year’s graduates, including this touching multimedia project on cochlear implants for young deaf or hard-of-hearing children.

Some of my favourite digital media pieces for the week include Poynter’s fantastic graphic on “200 Moments that Transformed Journalism, 2000-2009.” Read more about the development of the graphic here.

More soon, those are my fast bytes for the week!

Jax

It’s an Interesting World: 5

Money on a bar - is this a sign the recession is over?! (Home Sweet Home, Lower East Side)

Quote of the week:

“Don’t touch me on my studio! – eTV anchor Chris Maroleng warns AWB secretary-general Andre Visagie, on air, to back off … on his studio.

I am quite in love with a recent article by Trevor Butterworth published in Forbes, that discusses “How Twitter and ‘The New Yorker’ can be best friends.” In Bridging the Gap, Butterworth, who at one stage viewed blogging as a disastrous medium for long-form writers, now views Twitter as a useful service for writers: “If you tailor who you follow to what you want to find out, you have a powerful, human algorithm for interrogating the mass of musings deposited on the Web each day; and if you get followed, you have, potentially, a powerful tool for depositing your own work into the narrative stream.”

It’s an Interesting World: 4

In two days I’ll be winging my way to South Africa, and I just can’t tell you how excited I am. I’m trying to get a million things done before the flight, and one thing I made sure was high up on the list – next to seeing people – was seeing the Rockefeller tree, all lit up and beautiful!

Rockefeller Christmas tree - a thing of beauty!

It’s flippin’ huge, as you can see. I can’t believe the year is drawing to an end already, it’s mind-boggling how fast it’s gone. So much has happened that it’s hard to reflect on what’s been gained or lost in the last 12 months.