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Playlist: Beats and borders
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Borders – not so great for free speech, but not so bad for music it turns out. This is the theme of our latest playlist, which ties in with the autumn 2019 Index on Censorship magazine. The magazine looks at how borders stop the flow of information, movement and speech, whether you be a South Korean wanting to be in touch with your loved ones in the north or an artist being denied a visa to perform in the UK. And we highlight how this trend is getting worse, specifically how border officials are demanding access to individuals’ social media accounts at frontiers around the world.
Enjoy the below songs. Just remember to be vigilant when crossing state lines. In fact for tips on how to keep your personal information just that – personal – click here.
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M.I.A, Paper Planes
British-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A has made a name for herself exploring the trials of life as a refugee through her music. The Sri Lankan government previously accused M.I.A of being a liar, while her song Paper Planes is inspired by her difficulties obtaining a visa to work in the USA, a problem Jan Fox highlights in her article. Despite her own trials she has stayed vigilant and continues to use her voice to call for political change.
The Police, Every Breath You Take
“Every move you make, every step you take, I’ll be watching you,” sings Sting in the 1983 classic by English rock band The Police. His lyrics bare a striking resemblance to the theme of this issue, in which we reveal the extent to which border forces are snooping into your own personal information and data. Ela Stapley gives advice on what you can do to keep your information safe when crossing borders.
Icehouse, Cross the Border
Australian electronic rock band Icehouse take you to a border crossing in their hit song from their album Measure for Measure. Against edgy beats and a dreamy synth, lead singer Iva Davies talks about walls standing still and freedom fading away, specifically at the border. It’s musical escapism on many levels.
Neil Diamond, America
Also known as Coming to America, this song written and performed by the legendary musician Neil Diamond in 1980 presents a positive depiction of immigrating to the USA. Flash forward to the USA of 2019 and Diamond might struggle to muster as much optimism. The increasing difficulties people face when trying to enter the USA are detailed in Mexican-based journalist Stephen Woodman’s article for the magazine.
Elton John, Breaking Down Barriers
Elton John tries to break down barriers – cultural, sexual – in this 1981 single. His lyrics have many connotations, with some alluding to his identity as a homosexual man and having to build a wall around his heart “to keep the pain away”. Unfortunately this is still the case for many LGBT people, who are having to hide their sexuality when crossing borders, something Mark Frary highlights in magazine piece “Hiding your true self”.
The Doors, Break On Through (To the Other Side)
This signature song from The Doors illuminates the beauty of breaking on through to the other side. What that other side is has never been clarified, although given the drug references throughout the song it is probably safe to assume this is about psychedelic experiences. Drug references aside, the song’s lines about a country with “arms that chained us” and “eyes that lied” have universal implications that reverberate throughout the current issue.
The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter
A track that captures the tensions of 1969, when the war in Vietnam was intensifying and the threat of nuclear devastation from the Soviet Union painted a bleak future for the world. The desire to seek shelter is no less relevant today than it was when the Stones wrote this song. And it’s still inspiring art, as Irene Caselli shows in her article on artists trying to tell the stories of migrants in the Mediterranean.
System of a Down, Fuck the System
It’s exactly what you think the song is about: a big two-fingered salute to the system. The politically charged lyrics express how the government gets to decide what is acceptable and what is not, just like some governments do today within a country and at its borders. Turkish contributing editor Kaya Genç reports on how travellers to Turkey are being restricted in what they can take into the country and what they can read. Wikipedia? Forget about it.
Snow Patrol, Set Fire to the Third Bar
In this haunting track from Snow Patrol, lead vocalist Gary Lightbody and featured artist Martha Wainwright sing about being miles from their loved one and the pain that comes with such separation. It’s a feeling that is all too familiar for those in South Korea who have had their relationships and families torn apart by the North and South border, and who can face prison if they try to get in touch with them, as Steven Borowiec reports.
Wazimbo, Nwahulwana
This choice is less about the song than the singer. Mozambique-musician Wazimbo is one of many artists who have had their UK visas denied this year. He was forced to pull out of an appearance at Peter Gabriel’s Womad Festival back in July as a result. Charlotte Bailey discusses Wazimbo in the magazine as she looks at how UK border policy is forcing artists to stop visiting the country, and how the UK’s cultural scene is losing out as a result.
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Detectives digitales
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En África, los drones se están utilizando en nuevos estilos de periodismo, Mavik/Flickr
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En lo más profundo de la provincia de Mpumalanga, al extremo noreste de Sudáfrica, un periódico sin apenas recursos está utilizando una combinación de alta tecnología y sistemas más rudimentarios para mejorar las vidas de las comunidades a las que abastece. También ha introducido una forma de hacer periodismo pionera e innovadora, que no solo sitúa a sus lectores al centro de su cobertura, sino que también los involucra directamente en las operaciones de recopilación de noticias.
Lo que está haciendo este periódico supone una lección para medios de comunicación más establecidos que buscan nuevas fuentes de ingresos no tradicionales, y los cuales, en la era del periódico digital y en red, lo están pasando mal para sobrevivir y no perder relevancia.
Ziwaphi, este periódico de carácter comunitario, se distribuye a comunidades en el distrito Nkomazi, situado en el epicentro de la pandemia de sida en Sudáfrica, donde hay poco acceso a la cobertura informativa. Uno de los mayores problemas de la zona son las corrientes contaminadas con aguas residuales. Las mujeres y niñas pasan horas cada día recogiendo agua de los ríos para beber, cocinar y lavar, pero a menudo estos ríos también se utilizan para el vertido de residuos humanos. Esto hace que en ocasiones se disparen los casos de E. coli, provocando diarreas. Y, cada pocos años, hay un brote de cólera.
Gracias a una subvención y a la asistencia técnica de African Media Initiative (AMI), punta de lanza de las iniciativas por arraigar el periodismo de datos en las redacciones africanas, Ziwaphi está colocando smartphones viejos, metidos en botellas de plástico transparente, en ríos de la zona. Los teléfonos funcionan como rudimentarios microscopios electrónicos, al utilizar sus cámaras para sacar fotos corrientes con flash. Después, se recogen estas fotografías, se magnifican y se comparan con imágenes de una base de datos existente para detectar niveles peligrosos de E. coli. Luego se envían los resultados a las residentes por SMS, informándolas de dónde es seguro recoger agua.
Cerrando el círculo, el periódico analiza los datos en tiempo real para detectar tendencias e incluso, con suerte, triangular las fuentes de contaminación.
Una vez al mes, Ziwaphi publica un análisis detallado basado en los resultados que se comparte con otros periódicos de la comunidad y con las emisoras de radio locales. Así esperan que la información pueda empoderar a la gente de la región y obligar al gobierno a abastecerla de agua limpia y servicios de saneamiento. Los lectores de Ziwaphi también ayudan a recolectar información por medio de una app móvil de avisos de ciudadanos, que complementa así los datos de los smartphones con relatos de testigos sobre los impactos de la polución y las posibles fuentes de contaminación.
«El total del proyecto solo costó 20.000 dólares, incluido un modesto salario para un reportero especializado en salud a tiempo completo durante un año», explica Justin Arenstein, encargado de estrategia para AMI. «Pero lo importante, desde un punto de vista de sostenibilidad mediática, es que Ziwaphi está utilizando el proyecto del agua para construir el esqueleto digital que necesitará para sobrevivir en el futuro próximo».
Hasta hace poco, África se encontraba a la zaga del resto del mundo en lo concerniente a internet por los altos costes de acceso. Hoy, el despliegue de nuevos cables submarinos está contribuyendo a abaratar el coste de la conectividad, especialmente en el este y el sur del continente. Esto ha dado pie a una nueva y emocionante era periodística, con una explosión de ideas e innovaciones que están produciendo herramientas para lo que se han venido a denominar «noticias útiles». Los medios tradicionales están intentando conectar cada vez más con la ciudadanía, involucrarla en la búsqueda de noticias y en los procesos de producción de contenido. El proyecto de los móviles en botellas es un ejemplo de lo que se puede conseguir con recursos limitados.
En Kenia, Radio Group, la tercera entidad mediática en tamaño, ha puesto en funcionamiento Star Health, el primero en una serie de kits de herramientas para ayudar a los lectores a comprobar fácilmente la reputación de los médicos y descubrir si alguna vez han sido declarados culpables de negligencia. Se dio un caso en el que un hombre que estaba ejerciendo como médico resultó ser veterinario.
La plataforma, que ha demostrado ser todo un éxito en un país en el que los doctores poco fiables son un problema extendido, también ayuda a los usuarios a localizar especialistas médicos en su centro de salud más cercano. Además, puede utilizarse para comprobar qué medicinas están cubiertas por el sistema nacional de salud. Es de destacar que los resultados de las consultas en Star Health se envían a través de un servicio Premium de SMS que genera un flujo de ingresos crucial en estos tiempos en los que los medios de comunicación se han visto obligados a diversificar modelos de financiación ajenos a la publicidad y, en algunos casos, a la venta de ejemplares.
«Estas herramientas no reemplazan al periodismo tradicional, sino que mejoran el reportaje periodístico al ayudar a los lectores, por ejemplo, a descubrir cómo una noticia nacional sobre médicos estafadores les afecta personalmente», indica Arenstein. Las noticias han de ser personales y prácticas, y deberían convertirse en parte importante de las estrategias de transformación digital de los medios de comunicación, subraya.
La realidad del periodismo hoy día es que, aunque los medios de difusión no cuenten con el público masivo de los medios tradicionales, cualquier persona con un smartphone o conocimientos digitales básicos puede convertirse en «editor».
En Nigeria, por ejemplo, la comunidad online Sahara tiene más de un millón de seguidores en redes sociales, muchos más que muchas entidades tradicionales. El reto en un futuro será para las redacciones, que habrán de aprovechar estas redes comunitarias sin perder de vista el hecho de que la voz de la ciudadanía ha de seguir siendo central.
Un proyecto pionero en la aislada región nigeriana del Delta ha visto trabajar a los medios convencionales junto a una red ya existente de información ciudadana, Naija Voices, en la introducción de drones a control remoto con cámaras incorporadas que detecten y vigilen posibles vertidos de crudo destructivos del medio ambiente. El plan es distribuir las grabaciones a los principales canales de televisión y a periódicos colaboradores en Lagos y Abuja. Esto facilitará a la prensa un alcance sin precedentes a partes del país que hasta ahora han sido prácticamente inaccesibles.
Los drones de alas fijas son relativamente baratos y fáciles de manejar, pero también se estrellan de vez en cuando. «Conseguir partes nuevas, como las alas o piezas del fuselaje, sería caro y llevaría mucho tiempo, así que estamos experimentando con impresoras 3D para generar piezas in situ y según las necesitemos», explica Arenstein.
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Este experimento de información ciudadana parte de la labor de AfricaSkyCam, que lleva un año experimentando con drones en Kenia como parte de «la primera cámara aérea para una sala de redacción africana». SkyCam usa drones y globos equipados con cámaras para ayudar a los medios que no pueden permitirse helicópteros a cubrir noticias de última hora en situaciones peligrosas o ubicaciones de difícil acceso.
En Sudáfrica, el Oxpeckers Center for Investigative Environmental Reporting está utilizando «geo-periodismo» y otras técnicas de mapping para amplificar el alcance de su labor periodística y analizar noticias como la caza furtiva de rinocerontes y la caza de leones en recintos cerrados —se crían leones mansos para que adinerados cazadores de trofeos les disparen—. Las investigaciones ayudan a desvelar tendencias o vínculos con sindicatos del crimen, y a la cobertura de Oxpeckers Center se ha atribuido el fomento de una reciente prohibición de la caza en recintos cerrados en Botswana. También han contribuido a la redacción de leyes sobre el comercio de productos del rinoceronte y otras especies salvajes en China y Mozambique.
Pero lo cierto es que las redacciones africanas con pocos recursos no suelen contar con la tecnología ni los conocimientos digitales para construir nuevas herramientas online.
Es por ello por lo que el programa de innovación digital de AMI —e iniciativas similares por parte de Google, la fundación Bill & Melinda Gates y benefactores de menor envergadura como Indigo Trust— están construyendo sistemas de apoyo externo para ayudar a las redacciones de estos medios a dar el salto a un futuro digital.
Estos donantes también se están centrando en introducir los nuevos enfoques del periodismo de datos en medios tradicionales. Están ayudando a los periodistas a utilizar información digital de acceso público, proveniente de fuentes como censos o presupuestos del gobierno, para construir herramientas que asistan a la ciudadanía en la toma de decisiones más informadas sobre problemas que que les afectan a diario.
Entre quienes están ayudando a impulsar este enfoque desde las nuevas tecnologías está Code for Africa, una red de laboratorios tecnológicos municipales para países de todo el continente que tienen como objetivo fomentar la innovación y trabajar con medios y redes de periodismo ciudadano, de modo que puedan superar la brecha digital.
Code for South Africa (C4SA) está ayudando a todos, desde el periódico Ziwaphi —con sede en un barrio marginal producto del apartheid— y su proyecto de alertas de cólera, hasta medios nacionales de comunicación, como el Mail & Guardian o el City Press.
«Los medios saben que están en crisis. Ven amenazado su modelo de negocio basado en la publicidad a medida que su público se pasa a internet, pero la innovación digital sigue siendo difícil de vender», afirma Adi Eyal, director de C4SA. «El progreso es horriblemente lento porque muchos dueños de medios africanos se muestran indecisos a la hora de invertir sin antes saber cómo generarán ingresos estos nuevos modelos.
»A consecuencia de ello, la mayoría de lo que las redacciones sudafricanas llaman periodismo de datos de producción propia, en realidad, no es más que visualización. Están creando muy poca información útil y prácticamente nada en lo que se refiere a herramientas informativas que la gente pueda usar en la toma de decisiones. La inversión en un solo proyecto es significativa, así que es importante que las herramientas que se están elaborando sean duraderas, para que las redacciones puedan utilizarlas para informar sobre problemas y la gente pueda actuar».
El progreso será extremadamente lento, pero aun así los cimientos se van colocando poco a poco, a medida que los «rizomas» —conjuntos de datos de todas partes de África— se recolectan y cotejan en el portal African Open Data, para que sean utilizados tanto por periodistas de redacción como por gente que sepa programar. Tener estos datos supone la posibilidad de crear aplicaciones y herramientas que servirán para construir comunidades y generar ingresos.
C4SA también está construyendo la infraestructura «invisible» de soporte para ayudar a las redacciones a construir nuevas herramientas de forma rápida y barata. Esto incluye el apoyo a iniciativas como OpenAfrica, que ayuda a las redacciones a digitalizar y extraer datos de documentos fuente. C4SA también ha construido una serie de interfaces de programación de aplicaciones (API) de lectura mecánica ricas en datos que los periodistas pueden incorporar fácilmente a sus apps de móvil o páginas web. Las API accionan herramientas como WaziMap, que utiliza censos, elecciones y otros datos para ayudar a los periodistas a investigar a fondo las estructuras de las comunidades a nivel de distritos locales. Cada uno de estos recursos es una herramienta no solo para los medios, sino también para activistas ciudadanos y vigilantes del interés público, afirman Arenstein.
En una columna reciente sobre el futuro de los periódicos, Ferial Haffajee, editor de City Press, un periódico dominical sudafricano que está pasando por dificultades para reinventarse en la era digital, escribía: «Nada es lo que era. Casi nada es lo que parece. Tenemos un futuro, y es muy seductor». Y solo hace falta ver los smartphones en botellas y los drones impresos en 3D para entender que este futuro se está convirtiendo, redacción a redacción, proyecto a proyecto, en realidad.
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Raymond Joseph es un periodista independiente con base en Ciudad del Cabo. Está en el consejo de Big Issue Sudáfrica y tuitea en @rayjoe
This article originally appeared in the autumn 2014 issue of Index on Censorship magazine
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From drones to floating smartphones: how technology is helping African journalists investigate
Quadcopters, like this one flown by Ben Kreimer of the University of Nebraska’s Drone Journalism Lab, are being used by AfricanSkyCam to collect images. (Photo: AfricanSkyCAM/University of Nebraska)
In conjunction with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015, we will be publishing a series of articles that complement many of the upcoming debates and discussions. We are offering these articles from Index on Censorship magazine for free (normally they are held within our paid-for archive) as part of our partnership with the festival. Below is and article by Raymond Joseph on n how low-cost technology is helping African newsrooms get hold of information that they couldn’t previously track from the autumn 2014 issue. This article is a great starting point for those planning to attend the Technologies of revolution: how innovations are undermining regimes everywhere session at the festival.
Index on Censorship is a global quarterly magazine with reporters and contributing editors around the world. Founded in 1972, it promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression.
Deep in Mpumalanga province, in the far north-east of South Africa, a poorly resourced newspaper is using a combination of high and low tech solutions to make a difference in the lives of the communities it serves.
It is also pioneering a new and innovative form of journalism that not only places its readers at the centre of its coverage, but also involves them directly in the newsgathering operation.
What this small newspaper does is a lesson for bigger, more established media outlets, which are searching for new non-traditional revenue streams and which, in the age of online and digital journalism, struggle to survive and remain relevant.
The Ziwaphi community-based newspaper is distributed to communities in the Nkomazi district, situated at the epicentre of the South Africa AIDS pandemic, where there is very little access to news reporting. One of the biggest problems in the area is water contaminated with sewage. Women and young girls spend hours every day collecting water from rivers for drinking, cooking and washing, but these same rivers are also often used to dispose of human waste. As a result the E.coli count sometimes spikes, causing diarrhoea. And every few years, there is an outbreak of cholera.
Using a grant, and technology assistance from the African Media Initiative (AMI), which is spearheading the drive to embed data-driven journalism in African newsrooms, Ziwaphi is placing old smartphones submerged in clear plastic bottles in rivers in the area. Functioning as simple electron microscopes, the phones use their cameras to take regular flash-lit pictures. These photographs are then magnified and compared against images from an existing database to detect dangerous levels of E.coli. The results are delivered via SMS to residents, informing them where it’s safe to collect water.
Completing the circle, the newspaper analyses the real-time data to detect trends, and hopefully even triangulates the sources of contamination.
Once a month, Ziwaphi publishes an in-depth story based on the results, which is shared with other community papers and local radio stations in the area. The hope is the information can then empower ordinary people in the region to force the government to deliver clean water and sanitation. Ziwaphi’s readers also help gather information themselves using a mobile-based citizen reporting app which supplements the smartphone data with eyewitness stories about the impacts of the pollution, and possible sources of contamination.
“The total project only cost $20 000, including a modest salary for a year for a full-time health reporter,” says Justin Arenstein, a strategist for AMI. “But the important thing, from a media sustainability perspective, is that Ziwaphi is using the water project to build the digital backbone it will need to survive in the near future.”
Until recently Africa lagged behind the rest of the world where the internet was concerned, because of the high cost of access. But now the deployment of new undersea cables is helping bring down the cost of connectivity, especially in east and southern Africa. This has sparked an exciting new era for journalism, with an explosion of ideas and innovations that are producing “news you can use” tools. Established media is increasingly reaching out to citizens to involve them in their news-gathering and content production processes. The phone-in-a-bottle project is an example of what can be done with limited resources.
In Kenya, the Radio Group, the third largest media house, has set up Star Health, the first in a set of toolkits to help readers do easy background checks on doctors and learn whether they have ever been found guilty of malpractice. In one case a man working as a doctor turned out to be a vet.
The site, which has proved to be a big hit in a country where dodgy doctors are a major problem, also helps users locate medical specialists and their nearest health facility. It can also be used to check whether medicines are covered by the national health scheme. Importantly, the results of queries on Star Health are delivered via a premium SMS service that generates an income stream, crucial in an age when media needs to diversify revenue models away from reliance on advertising and, in some case, copy sales.
“These tools don’t replace traditional journalism, rather they augment journalistic reportage by, for example, helping readers to find out how a national story on dodgy doctors personally affects them,” says Arenstein. News must be personal and actionable and should become an important part of the media’s digital transformation strategies, he stresses.
The reality of journalism today is that, even though outlets may not have the large audiences of conventional media, anyone with a smartphone or basic digital skills has the ability to be a “publisher”.
In Nigeria, for example, the Sahara online community has over a million followers on social media, far more than many media houses. The challenge in the future will be for newsrooms to tap into these grassroots networks, but still keep citizens’ voices at their centre.
A pioneering project in Nigeria’s isolated Delta region has seen the mainstream media working with an existing citizen-reporting network, Naija Voices, to adopt remote-controlled drones fitted with cameras to monitor for environmentally destructive oil spills. The plan is to syndicate the footage to mainstream TV and newspaper partners in Lagos and Abuja. This would allow the newspapers unprecedented reach into parts of the country that had previously been largely inaccessible.
The fixed-wing drones are relatively cheap and simple to fly, but they crash from time to time. “Getting new parts, like the wings or pieces of the fuselage, would be costly and time consuming, so we’re experimenting with 3D printers to create parts onsite and on demand,” says Arenstein.
This citizen-reporting experiment builds on the work of AfricanSkyCam which for the past year has been experimenting with drones in Kenya as part of “Africa’s first newsroom-based eye-in-the-sky”. SkyCam uses drones and camera-equipped balloons to help media that cannot afford news helicopters to cover breaking news in dangerous situations or difficult to reach locations.
In South Africa, Oxpeckers Center for Investigative Environmental Reporting is using “geo journalism” and other mapping techniques to amplify its reporting and to analyse stories such as rhino poaching and canned lion hunting – breeding tame lions for wealthy trophy-hunters to shoot. Investigations help uncover trends or links to criminal syndicates and the Oxpeckers Center’s reportage is credited with promoting a recent ban on canned hunting in Botswana, and helping to shape laws on trade in rhino and other wildlife products in China and in Mozambique.
But the reality is that poorly resourced African newsrooms seldom have the in-house technology or digital skills to build new online tools.
So, AMI’s digital innovation programme and similar initiatives at Google, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and at smaller donors including the Indigo Trust are all building external support systems to help newsrooms leapfrog into a digital future.
Donors are also focusing on embedding data journalism approaches into mainstream media. They are helping journalists use publicly available digital information from sources such as censuses or government budgets to build decision-making tools to help ordinary citizens make better informed decisions on bread and butter issues affecting their lives.
Helping drive the new-tech approach is Code for Africa, a network of civic technology labs planned for countries across the continent to help drive innovation and to work with media and citizen journalist networks, to help them bridge the digital divide.
Code for South Africa (C4SA) is helping everyone, from the township-based Ziwaphi and its cholera alert project, to national media outlets, such as the Mail & Guardian and City Press.
“The media know they’re in crisis, with their advertising-based business model under threat as audiences shift online, but digital innovation is still a hard sell,” says C4SA director Adi Eyal. “Progress is painstakingly slow because many African media owners are hesitant to invest before they know how these new models will generate revenue. The result is that much of what South African newsrooms are calling home-grown data journalism is just visualisation. They’re creating very little actionable information and virtually no news tools that people can use to make decisions. The investment in a one-off project is high, so it is important that the tools that are built live on, so that newsrooms can use them to report on issues and people can act.”
Progress is painstakingly slow, but nevertheless the building blocks are slowly being put in place as the “root stock” — datasets from across Africa — is collected and collated on the African Open Data portal for both newsroom journalists and civic coders to use. The data means they can create applications and tools which will help them build communities and generate income.
C4SA is also building an “invisible” back-end infrastructure that newsrooms can help build news tools quickly and cheaply. This includes support for initiatives such as OpenAfrica that helps newsrooms digitise and extract data from source documents. C4SA has also built a series of open, machine-readable, data rich application programming interfaces (APIs) that newsrooms can easily plug into their mobile apps or websites. The APIs drive tools like WaziMap, which uses censuses, elections and other data to help journalists to dig into the make up of communities, right down to local ward level. Each of these resources is a tool not only for the media, but also for civic activists and public watchdogs, says Arenstein.
In a recent column on the future of newspapers, Ferial Haffajee, the editor of City Press, a national South African Sunday newspaper that is struggling to reinvent itself in the digital age, wrote: “Nothing is as it was. Nor are most things what they seem. We have a future, and it is tantalising.”
And you just need to look at the smartphones in a bottle and 3D-printed drones to know that this future is slowly, newsroom by newsroom, project by project, becoming a reality.
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This article was posted on 21 October at indexoncensorship.org