A new name for news...

To enter this epic competition is easy - all you media, advertising and marketing types out there just need to come up with a new brand name. Something you do daily. For what you may ask? News. What do I mean news? I mean the stuff that pours onto our screens and mobiles minute by minute affecting every aspect of our life, from which roads to avoid for speed traps to which minister's been suspended today!

For 14 years I lectured in journalism and indeed still have the dubious pleasure of teaching aspirant journalists today and one of the things I used to say all those years ago was that what we read in the newspapers this morning won't be news tonight. Well, today I would say what was news five minutes ago isn't news any longer.

The other day I was driving to an early morning meeting when the Vavi rape accusation story was in full flow. On the way back I was listening to EWN on 702 Talk Radio, when I heard them say the woman who had accused Vavi of rape had just dropped the charges. This was around 1pm. Twitter was alive with the story - also with comments pouring in from all sides.

Old news

Unfortunately for The Star newspaper by the time their lunch edition had gone to press and hit the streets their front page headline of Vavi Faces Rape Charge was redundant. And let's not get started on our new SABC 24-hour news channel. They can barely find anything resembling real news for their 7pm broadcast let alone fill 24 hours a day with fresh, relevant offerings.

This brings me to the question of whether in fact traditional evening news broadcasts or late edition newspapers are relevant any more. I know that for someone like me, a newsaholic, in the past I wouldn't have missed an evening news broadcast, switching from Sky to ETV to Al Jazeera, CNN and so on. And I'd read The Star newspaper page for page.

Now by the end of the day there's not much local or international news I haven't seen or heard - why watch news at 7pm when I could be watching reruns of Downton Abbey or Masterchef?

Now the very word 'news' infers something new, which is what arrives via internet second by second, so the name is applicable in that space. But what comes out in our daily and even weekly press (apart from the generally really good investigative pieces by Sunday Times, Mail and Guardian and City Press) is often stale news by the weekend.

So what do we call it? Input formerly called news? Ex-Twitter feed? Linked in Leftovers? Late of Google? This is where you creative types come in...

And to leave you on a note on change from that great philosopher Andy Warhol: They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.