About the Book
Gwen Ansell’s Introduction to Journalism has been the go-to-textbook for university journalism classes and intern programmes since it first appeared (as Basic Journalism) in 2002. But newsrooms have been changing fast. This fully revised and updated 3rd edition retains all the practical hints, tips and real-life South African case studies that made the 1st and 2nd editions so popular, but adds important new elements to reflect the media climate now.
All chapters are linked to the relevant parts of the National Qualifications Framework. To meet the needs of multimedia newsrooms, each chapter now includes the foundations skills for convergent reporting: storytelling across media platforms, interviewing for sound, captioning online galleries, headlining with search-engines in mind, and more.
The book discusses how readers across the world are reading their newspapers today, what this means for Africa, and whether print really has a future. In response to reader demand, there’s an all-new chapter on sub-editing, designed to meet the needs of both new journalists who are facing their first stint on the subs’ desk, and experienced reporters making the transition to editing. And in the midst of the future around the Protection of Information Bill and the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal, the updated law and ethics chapter sets out the rights and the responsibilities of journalists, and looks at the real legal situations behind the hype.
About the Author
Gwen Ansell is a veteran writer, editor and writing trainer. She has written several textbooks, including Introduction to Journalism, which is a set text for the national curriculum and trains scholars, journalists and other communicators in writing skills. As a researcher, Ansell is the author of the South African cultural history Soweto Blues, and has done extensive value-chain and innovation research on the South African music industry.
