Amongst believers

One of the best things about being about being at Highway Africa and the Digital Citizen Indaba is that I am amongst other believers. Here i am surrounded by people who blog and more importantly people who understand the IMPORTANCE of blogs to Africa. When newspaper editors, university vice chancellors, conference conveners understand and appreciate the KBW project as soon as they hear about it I get a warm feeling. At yesterday award ceremony a collective of Zimbabwe bloggers won one of the top prizes (once I get the link to their blog I will post it.)

On Monday one of the presenters, Neil Jacobson from FutureWorld, when talking about the future of newspapers in particular and media in general told the media about the, “culture of the individual”. That is in today’s digital society people use various tools to generate news that is relevant to them. I do not think that any of you rely solely on one newspaper for news. Many do not even look at newspapers at all.

The digital revolution is here in Africa and newspapers as well as other sections of the MSM need to realise that it is about a lot more to a digital strategy than having a website and a bunch of RSS feeds. The way we assimilate news is changing, where we go for news is changing and through our blogs we are not just reporting the news, which in itself is revolutionary, but we are helping create it, helping construct it, deciding which issues linger and which ones do not. These guys here get it, and they are powerful African news people, that puts a smile on my face.