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Media News South Africa

Malema, SAPA, and SA English media's wire copy problem

As a story about Julius Malema supposedly stepping down as president of the ANC Youth League spread through the news media on late last week, South Africa's cash-strapped and resource-shy English press showed its readiness to accept SAPA stories as gospel. In the process, they are creating a sea of sameness that's essentially killing their newspapers.

The Malema story raises questions about the way the South African media in particular use SAPA; more specifically, the media's over-reliance on the press agency's copy.

"With ever tighter resources, stressed-out copy tasters and news editors and night editors trying to meet deadlines, if there happens to be a SAPA story sitting on the wires, waiting to be cut and pasted, slotted in, that's what happens," says SAPA editor Mark van der Velden. "It is a cop out to blame news agencies for the bland reproduction of wire agency copy. "

Read the full article on www.thedailymaverick.co.za.

Source: Daily Maverick

Daily Maverick is a unique blend of news, information, analysis and opinion delivered from our newsrooms in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. There are many ways to describe exactly what we do (and for the price of a cup of coffee we’re capable of talking your ears off about it), but the best way to understand the end result is to experience it. Every part of Daily Maverick is free-to-air and no payment is required, although free registration is required for a small subset of functions and pages.

Daily Maverick is run by an independently owned, private company with no affiliation to any other media group (or political party or religious organisation.) Follow Daily Maverick on Twitter at @dailymaverick.

Go to: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/

About Mandy de Waal: @mandyldewaal

Editor, writer and researcher. *Editor of #TheFutureByDesign & The Africa Annual *Published in Africa's Greatest Entrepreneurs *Published in Rolling Stone Magazine, The Guardian (UK), Daily Maverick, Finweek, Mail & Guardian, City Press, Rapport, Moneyweb, Noseweek; Brainstorm Magazine; ITWeb, and MarkLives. *Before becoming a full time writer, de Waal founded brand agency Idea Engineers, and led the Cape Town office of Text 100.
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