The rise of the blog scoops in SA
There's been a run of hot news stories being broken by online journalists or bloggers recently - and this is a trend we in the traditional mainstream press are going to have to watch carefully.
Besides having our clocks cleaned every now and then by bloggers or web journalists, it's great to have an explosion of new independent voices taking shape in the South African online environment.
Recently we had James Myburgh on Politicsweb scooping everyone with the news that Mokotedi Mpshe, the acting head of public prosecutions, had apparently plagiarised substantial portions of a foreign court judgement in his decision to withdraw corruption charges against Jacob Zuma.
Today Gill Moodie, the brains behind Grubstreet.co.za (and my wife, so I must make this disclosure) has a good follow on Myburgh's story.
She managed to track down Judge Seagroatt, the man behind the judgement cited by Mpshe, in the UK and he has some less than polite things to say about our acting head of public prosecutions.
But there have been other examples too. The Hub, an excellent blog dedicated to cycling, had a hot scoop a couple of months back about alleged price-fixing and anti-competitive behaviour by leading cycle outlets.
Mark Keohane, former Boks communications manager and the blogger with the biggest audience in SA, regularly offers up rugby scoops on Keo.co.za
A couple of years ago The Drudge Report in the States made headlines as it scooped mainstream US media on the Monica Lewinsky story. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton is now bigger than many of the celebrities he covers. Some commentators say the rise of independent online voices - and their capacity to scoop traditional media - has contributed to the collapse of many of the greats of US journalism.
Here in SA it is early days, but I predict some exciting times ahead.
It's great to see that online voices do not have to be simply commentary and opinion but that they can also produce solid journalism and that's good for all of us.
What we are witnessing here is not the death of traditional journalism... it's simply moving to a new medium, developing a new voice and style but the essence of the scoop remains the same: getting the story and telling it first.
