Configuring convergence : southern African websites looking at American experience

Berger, Guy

Title: Configuring convergence : southern African websites looking at American experience
Creator: Berger, Guy
Date: 2001
Type: text
Identifier: vital:535
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008553
Identifier: ISBN 0-86810-379-9
Description: I want the Web to win. Africa’s news sites on the Internet need to succeed and survive. They’re a small guarantee against global marginalisation, and a critical intersection across our continent’s domestic divides. But the outlook is not good. At a conference I went to in Berkeley in April 2001, a venture capitalist had this to say: "If I were to make a speech on when there’ll be investment in new media again, it would be a rather short topic." The alarming closures and retrenchments at news websites in the USA are sending scary signals to our fledgling efforts back here. Starting and growing media enterprises of any sort in African conditions has never been easy. Long starved of investment, our cyberpublishing now faces even greater pressures as old media – newspapers, radio and TV – try to make ends meet under mounting threats. Advertising is shrinking, local costs are rising and currency falls are fuelling the price of imported production factors. Consumers have less cash to spend. Governments are giving even greater problems in some cases. Will we still be here in the morning, and in what condition? This booklet suggests the way forward is for new media to converge with selected partners, old media and new.
Format: 146 pages, pdf
Publisher: Faculty of Humanities, Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University
Language: English
Relation: Berger, G.J.E. (2001) Configuring convergence: southern African websites looking at American experience. Rhodes University New Media Lab, Grahamstown. ISBN 0 86810 379 9

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Berger, Guy J E Gough (Prof Emeritus)

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