I was lucky enough to be invited by the Associated Press to speak at the annual Newsxchange conference in Barcelona. As you’d expect for the premier gathering of the broadcast TV news industry, Newsxchange attracts some great speakers. I therefore thought I’d try and summarise some of the best sessions from the packed schedule. First up, my thoughts on a session entitled “Africa: defying stereotypes”. As you can imagine I was really looking forward to this session; however although I found it stimulating I was a little disappointed by some of the points of view put across by the panel of African news people and journalists. The primary contention of the session was that global news media persists in reporting Africa as a continent in strife. The compere, Yvonne Ndege from Al Jazeera said that this was not an accurate portrayal, throwing out the implausibly speculative stat that by 2100 (!) half of the world’s largest economies will be in Africa as evidence that “Africa” should be ...
Thoughts on strategy in a Digital Economy