Writing

I wish I knew better grammar maybe I could express myself in a much better way and not use the word ‘better’ twice in one sentence. Oh but that’s vocabulary! So I need better grammar and to add more words to my vocabulary, noted.

I’ll wear my heart on my sleeve and keep it short and sweet. I’m a little confused about life, my mental and emotional cabins are not intact. I read somewhere on the gram someone wrote “Therapy in your 20’s is important” oh man did I agree with that! I don’t think I actually hit that LIKE/LOVE button because I’m a “hater”.

Writing used to be my therapy, I preferred using a pen and paper before typing it out. There was something there, the pen pressing against the paper and ravishing it’s way through. Yet it seemed more like a waltz, the pen and paper in negotiation with one another, one step forward one step back this way that way and spin around. I would get lost in it, I found so much purpose in it and could have spent days just writing away if I didn’t get tired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You should be tweeting! Like me!

This twitter assignment taught me a lot about content, following and social media as a whole. I grew my twitter following by one hundred and fifty followers, I tweeted a lot, some days more than others and I followed a lot of people. I kept up with some trending topics and gave my two cents. That simple. Here is a little more though, just for you.

Above all, to they own self be true. Your tweets must be able to tell people who your who, so be true to your opinions and express how you feel about certain things. If you find something funny but it may seem inappropriate, express this, living without taking risks is not living at all. And by the way be informed, nothing is worse than uniformed opinions, twitter will let you have it! Make sure your tweets, if possible, can be backed up with facts.

Make sure you keep up with the trending topics and tweet about it more than seven times if you can. I made sure to retweet people I either agreed with or disagreed with, accompany these retweets with your comment but sometimes none is needed.

I also followed a lot of people to grow my twitter, I took the suggestions twitter gave me and some I hunted down on my own. Some followed me due to the mutual field we share which is journalism. Following a lot of people though helped a lot.

I learnt consistency in using twitter is essential. There was a time I went days without tweeting and I saw the consequences when I tweeted with zero likes or retweets or comments. I learnt that it is important to interact with others and engage with their opinions on matters if one wants a active twitter account or any social media account. (304 WORDS)

 

Water app for Cape Town

Water app to help Cape Town save more water

The water crisis in Cape Town has brought with it opportunities despite it’s obvious negative effects. Small and big businesses are in the race for the lucrative gains that come with solving this water crisis that is the first in its nature for a major city. One of these companies is AUX Studio, they have come up with an app to help Capetonian’s track and understand the City’s water consumption during this drought period.

  [Image from IOL]

Read : Gamification app summarizes the latest water crisis stats for Cape Town

The app is designed to not only educate but to encourage citizens to use water more sparingly by seeing their consumption in this real-time app. Trevor Sawrt of AUX understands that information alone does little to affect change, as in most cases it hasn’t. By using this app, residents might stop opening the tap and being occupied by something else while water is wasted. Or letting the cold shower water be wasted while waiting for warm water to come out. The app will keep the residents of Cape Town on their toes.

    [Image from IOL]

Also read : TapOff: informing, motivating, and gamifying water saving

The app has been featured on Memeburn.com, it can be found on AppStore and PlayStore under the education catergory. It’s been named one of the top education apps on these app stores. Residents with CoCT bills are the only ones who can calculate their per-person-per-day usage on the app calculator for now. They can then post the result on their suburb leaderboard. People were quick to point out this does not include people without a water bill and the developers replied in the app store by saying:

”You’ve raised a great point here which we need to consider. We decided to release the product before it contained all the possible features we could build, otherwise we might never have launched at all, and we didn’t want that. We realise there are things that we have not conquered but we will get there as we gather feedback like this, learn and adapt.”

This is one of the many innovative ways businesses are coming up with to fight the drought. Cape Town might have a shortage of water but no shortage of entrepreneurs  it seems.

 

South Africa’s leading law firm leads the way to AI technology

Webber Wentzel, not just law but innovation tool

With Artificial Intelligence  on the rise and showing no signs of declining anytime soon, companies want a piece of it! Webber Wentzel, one of the leading South African law firms has come to the party by adopting Luminance’s artificial intelligence to increase how their M&A transactions perform.

[Photo by The Daily Campus]

Weber Wentzel is the firm that has just recently won M&A Africa and BEE Legal Advisor of the Year 2017 by deal value at the 17^th Annual Dealbreakers Awards.  Believing they can do better and that the sky, which is how high up they are, is not the limit, they chose to “deploy Luminance for its ability to effortlessly aid the work of its legal teams”. The firm found some favorable qualities in Luminance’s built-in collaboration tools which allow one to group documents, assign documents and track live progress among other things.

The AI platform is in partnership with the University of Cambridge, they use advanced machine learning programs from the university to “automatically sort, cluster and classify a data room”. Luminance, which began operating towards the end of 2016  has 70 clients across 18 countries. On the other hand, Webber Wentzel has been operating for 150 years and in making such an investment shows how the company is progressing with the times.

[Institution Machine]

Celia Pienaar who is the Legal Project Manager at Webber Wentzel said the company has always looked for ways in which to improve the quality of their work by using innovative technology. She also said that this was their next step in increasing their ability to handle “the management and review of increasingly large volumes of documents” by using machine learning technology.

The CEO of Luminance Emily Foges spoke not only kindly of the law firm but with great respect, as they are the first firm to use this technology in South Africa.  She highlighted the importance of innovation in the legal sector and the joy they have at Luminance to be assisting the law firm with many of South Africa’s “largest and most complex transactions”. Artificial Intelligence is no longer something for fun and games, it’s in the corporate world. (WORD COUNT 351)

Related links

https://www.pressportal.co.za/business-and-economy/story/14825/webber-wentzel-deploys-luminance-s-artificial-intelligence-platform-in-south-africa.html

https://futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/

https://www.gsmarena.com/smartphones_artificial_intelligence_and_machine_learning-news-30627.php

 

 

 

First or right, being right or being first in Social reporting

 

Information! Information! Information! It is all around us, newspapers, radio, television, internet (facebook, blogs, twitter) and posters! We are in the information age it is a known fact. Yet seems that having it all, it being the information, has made us lose our integrity as journalists and jeopardize our relationship with readers. Although journalists are not paid much nor do most become famous, they are held in high regard. I always get wind of admiration and respect after I answer the question ‘What are you studying?’. The answer to which is ‘I am a second year journalism student’. Why is it that journalists are held in high regard? Well because people see us as people who seek and uncover the truth (yes as a journalism student we are taught the truth is subjective but to the lay-man truth and facts are one).

 

This standard of morality stems from trusting what is said on the news as accurate, accurate as in true. It is famous actor and director Denzel Washington who summoned up today’s phenomenon “If you don’t read the newspaper you uniformed, if you do read it you’re misinformed”. Which is the whole topic of this piece, the state of news reporting today, the competition, does it have a boundary? A limit? When does the want to be first take a backseat for the need to be right? In the South African code of ethics for media and print the first line of the preamble says “The media exist to serve society”. Journalists, editors, the entire media seems to have read this line in a hurry to finish reading, they should have stopped and paused at that line, read it again and take it in.

 

The Globe and Mail public editor Sylvia Stead writes about “Why being right beats being first” in which she mention the Quebec City mosque attack which left six people dead. When it happened many publications, also online news platforms released information which was not true/factual. Fake names of suspects given and the number of people dead which was also wrong were released before a police briefing had taken place. Now these online sources and publications got what they wanted, first place but in this race your ‘trophy’ gets taken and you are shamed when the facts come out with relevant sources backing up the story. Your publication and platform is no longer trusted in a world where people are already skeptical of the media. In South Africa a racist email allegedly sent from the insurance company employee Miway made the rounds as news which turned out to be fake, not really sent by Miway employee. These stories make it difficult for readers to know what’s real or not real in this photoshop world. The media is powerful and has been powerful, that’s the most ruthless of dictators has always had a firm grip on it.

 

Our readers, the people, are smarter than we give them credit for. They know the media is powerful, hence it has become untrustworthy. It would seem it has abused its power more than can be tolerated. In the code of ethics for media in South Africa, chapter 1 which is ‘Gathering and reporting of news’ number 1.1 states “The media shall take care to report news truthfully, accurately and fairly”. Media law teaches us not to defame anyone as one, the journalist, might be sued and the publication for publishing. If journalists did the required job with as much integrity as the code of ethics outlines fake news could be exposed as a infiltrator, an outsider and outcast rather than one of us. Media ethics have become blurry and out of touch. Which begs the question, are journalists subjected to the same code of ethics as human beings? No. Obviously not, those code of ethics for journalists exist for a reason. Then where does one draw the line?

 

Where does one stop being a journalist and become human again? And what is more important in terms of ethics, the deed itself or the outcome? For example, if publishing a story about a corrupt mayor will get him fired even thought he is the breadwinner of his home with a wife and five children, should I do it? Or the bigger picture is he will be fired and state money will help more people in terms of investing in the city, creating employment and such. Is the value of the mayor’s innocent family more important than the value of the more people in need of state help. It’s between these teleological and deontological waves where we find a moral compass. Teleological ethics focus on the outcome, the consequence of an action, how much good or bad comes from any action is the value of a moral deed/sin or wrong. Deontological ethics say it is a must to be ethical, it is duty, you don’t choice because you have no choice! What you do now is important not the outcome! Just be good! And shut up!

 

I personally think one has a choice to be ethical but, there are situations where being ethical/moral is an obligation. For example the case of the corrupt mayor, you have a obligation to expose him, you watch the state for mal practice this is what you do! How you do it is a different story. I believe journalists are under teleological ethics, the outcome is important, the journey not so much. Journalists fall under utilitarianism, where the action must produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And in most cases journalists must, it is obligation, they must find Aristotle’s Golden Mean, where the point between lacking and excess meet, the equilibrium. That’s is why you can be right and first, as a publication, one just has to prioritize one more than the other. The deputy editor of The Globe and Mail Sinclair Stewart said it best “Our paramount job, as Globe journalists, is to be accurate. Better to be right, and hopefully fast with the news, than fast with the news, and hopefully right”. (1000 words)

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Washington,D, 2016, Denzel Washington destroys the leberal media over “fake news”, online video, viewed on 17 October 2017, viewed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrE1ZvldiFE

 

Stead,S, 2017, Why being right beats being first, The Globe and Mail, viewed on 11 October 2017, viewed from https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/community/inside-the-globe/public-editor-why-being-right-beats-being-first/article33855860/?ref=http://www.theglobeandmail.com&

 

Press Council, 2016, Code of ethics for South African print and online media, viewed on 11 October 2017, viewed from  http://www.presscouncil.org.za/ContentPage?code=PRESSCODE

 

Enca, 2017, Miway dismisses racist email as fake, viewed on  17 October 2017, viewed from https://www.enca.com/south-africa/miway-dismisses-racist-email-as-fake-news

 

Business Jargons, Teleological Ethical Theories, viewed on 09 October 2017, viewed from http://businessjargons.com/teleological-ethical-theories.html

Man shall not live by bread alone…

Food! Food is life! It is meaning! It is essential to the movement, crucial to the establishment of MAN but… it is not free. For example, at R50 one can get two kg chicken pieces at Spar or Shoprite.  Yet for that very same R50 one will only get three pieces of chicken on a tray at Woolworths, the self proclaimed “A grade” meat seller. This gets one thinking, “what is difference from the chicken I buy at Spar or Shoprite from the one at Woolies?” Which is a good question!

Now for centuries rich folk have eaten better than the average person but when this trend is also in the same type of foods, something has to give. If what Woolies is saying they have better quality chicken, then shouldn’t the rest of the population be fed that? Same with the normal cooking oil and olive oil, why is olive oil costing more if it has more health benefits? Again, shouldn’t this be given to more people if it has health benefits, doesn’t everyone deserve health benefits. With the cost of food being so high these days people should be learning or being taught how to grow their own vegetables and fruit. Vegetables should be so cheap that they shouldnever have to be on sale! What the Food Dialogues Report is referring to as “food justice” is this form of classism andit is not right. When it comes to food, everyone should be given the best quality of whatever.

In my community we need to learn how to grow our own little farms, there are farm almost everyone near my area but I am sure even the farm workers buy their veggies. We need to be provided with resources to help grow our own so that we need only to spend money on meat and save money for more important things. The government can play a major role in this. We journalists can write more about these things, implicate the government in this articles in order for them to act. The way to do this would be by working together, if we were able to unite this would work.

Each area would build or have three farms per area that would freely distribute rations of veggies and fruits per week depending on how many people live in those homes. The government would support this initiative if journalists put it “on blast” and if it gains proper media coverage because every government, especially ours,  likes to be seen in good grace with its people globally.  Yes we can do this. (Words 430)

From Russia with spies…

Death! We all know as human beings that we going to die one day. “Death to you” in the words of legendary comeian Kevin Hart. Death is inevitable. The story and death of Alexander Litvinenko is one of these cases, where one death is of great magnitude. Why? For the one person that considered the person dead their world.

The great writer that is Will Storr takes us on this gripping story of a former KGB agent whose different world has much common ground than we’d like to admit. Alexander’s love for Marina is that common ground, that capacity to care and love as all human beings do. Will Storr, who has written three books (The Heretics: Adventures with the enemies of science, The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone) according to the Guardian publication. He is not only an award winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction but a photographer too. Will is a busy man, if he is not at home with his wife Farrah (with whom he has been with for than a decade), he might be reporting from African refugee camps while finding time to write novels. It would seem he accepts any writing job that comes his way.

And when he does accept a writing role, he destroys. The Bad Blood story is intriguing and most fascinating. The way he unravels it as he takes you on a journey you’ve only known through history is amazing. Just after the fall of Soviet Russia and the disillusionment period was ensuing, Storr chooses to focus on one man who has seen and lived it all. Through the life and eyes of Alexander and Marina, the pain and brutality of what happened in this period is made personal and real. The lies, the corruption and silencing through the subtle killings a picture is painted clearly. The story encapsulates not just the modern day politics but the dark history and ghosts since back in the day. The story is well written and well told, there’s a difference, for everyone who is anyone to understand it to the tee. (350 WORDS)

Blogging is life to this generation

This generation of journalists cannot survive without blogging!! Blogging is important because this generation has a different way of communicating and publishing content. A great skill to put words together and consistency of this is vital in this generation that is filled with competition. Should journalism students have blogs and be consistent in producing content for these blogs.

Blogs offer a freedom to essay rather than the prison of academic life. Blogs can be approached from any angle and no topic cannot be reached, it is an endless page with exciting places to take one. It takes me to a land that flows of milk and honey. It improves the skill of writing as I explore other avenues and paths of writing. A style of writing that is unique and thought provoking is what editors are looking for as their columnists.

A writer seeks to explain himself/herself, ask for clarity, dig for a hidden truth, entertain, inspire or sometimes just tell a story. Writing for me this and more, the power to put life on a page. The power to type power onto the world web for others to draw strength from or reflect or even relate. Writers look for a connection that will break through any barrier and transcend time. Blogs give one that platform to connect with the readers and continue on with the magic that words create, when said right and put correctly in an effort to trigger that which is in all of us, hope.

Why blogging is important for this generation

This generation of journalists cannot survive without blogging!! Blogging is important because this generation has a different way of communicating and publishing content. A great skill to put words together and consistency of this is vital in this generation that is filled with competition. Should journalism students have blogs and be consistent in producing content for these blogs.

Blogs offer a freedom to essay rather than the prison of academic life. Blogs can be approached from any angle and no topic cannot be reached, it is an endless page with exciting places to take one. It takes me to a land that flows of milk and honey. It improves the skill of writing as I explore other avenues and paths of writing. A style of writing that is unique and thought provoking is what editors are looking for as their columnists.

A writer seeks to explain himself/herself, ask for clarity, dig for a hidden truth, entertain, inspire or sometimes just tell a story. Writing for me this and more, the power to put life on a page. The power to type power onto the world web for others to draw strength from or reflect or even relate. Writers look for a connection that will break through any barrier and transcend time. Blogs give one that platform to connect with the readers and continue on with the magic that words create, when said right and put correctly in an effort to trigger that which is in all of us, hope.