Presentations and Representations: Images of Newsroom Transformation in the post 1994 South Africa.

Abstract

This study is a snap shot of how a particular newsroom, that produces the second largest Sunday newspaper in South Africa, is interacting with the transformation discourses of the post 1994 era. As dictated by the research field, a newspaper designed for black readers from birth in 1982 but now moving towards a 'non racial read', the study mainly grapples with the state and role of 'blackness' in defining news media transformation discourses. In doing so and through ethnographic observation the study confronts one of the key fundamentals of social identity construction, reconstruction or deconstruction. This is to observe factors which go into the social making of the 'other' and the distribution of power thereof. Set against the background of a newspaper industry that seems to be sliding towards extinction across the globe, the study confronts the dynamics which have shaped modern journalism as a critical player in the organisation of 'social power' and the prevalence of 'relationships of domination'. While a lot has been said about the role of journalism , its relationship with power and causes of its apparent decline, more needs to be done to better understand how journalists, as 'intellectual professionals' actually interact with their social surrounding as they go about in their daily duties. The study concludes that the fault lines and mainly the service of journalism to historical dominations, while they could be explained by structural factors, mainly find life in many smaller parts which are largely characterised as insignificant daily routines.