TWO GOOD REASONS TO VISIT SOUTH AFRICA IN SEPTEMBER

During September two conferences of interest to scholars working in the field of journalism or media studies will be held in South Africa, and visitors that are planning to attend one should consider also staying for the other, in order to maximise the benefits of traveling to the country. These two back-to-back conferences will be hosted by two journalism schools that were cited as “centres of excellence” in the Skills Audit by the South African National Editors’ Forum in 2002.

The first conference, the Department of Journalism at Rhodes University’s Highway Africa Conference, will be held in Johannesburg from 8 to 10 September. The conference is aimed at media academics as well as working journalists. See their website below. In its 7th year, the conference focus will be on how African journalism relates to the issues raised by the UN's World Summit on the Information Society (December, Geneva). Deliberations will include attention to taking the Highway Africa 2002 "charter on the digital divide" into the Summit. More broadly, Highway Africa will examine the intersection of journalism, technology and the "Information Society". Within this, a strong theme will be on understanding the policy and regulatory issues around convergence issues - and the role that journalists play in developing national policies.

Directly thereafter, on 11 and 12 September, the journalism department of the University of Stellenbosch will be hosting a conference on the topic Media in Africa: current issues and future challenges to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the department. The aim of the conference is to include as many perspectives from academia as well as from the media industry, and keynote speakers will include leading role-players in South African journalism as well as media scholars. Academics as well as practicing journalists are invited to submit proposals for papers. Proposals for papers are due by 31 March, 2003. Send abstracts to hwasser@sun.ac.za or see http://www.sun.ac.za/journalism/conference.html for more information.