"Journalists will disappear if they don't make the transition to the digital world." That was a scary comment by 24.com's Arie Rossouw at Highway Africa last week. By implication this means communicators and any brands not making use of new media tools - because many of your consumers are, particularly your current/future consumers, the youth. Highway Africa and the Digital Citizen Indaba, which both took place at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, is the largest annual gathering of journalists in Africa. The focus was on new media and the digital tools to empower and enable reporting across Africa. It's one of the most exciting and scariest times to be in media with the cornucopia of tools available to us across multi-platforms, from mobile to blogs, to social media sites, wikis, etc - and available at the same time to all our readers aka 'citizen journalists' who are using them more effectively than some of the mainstream and traditional media to disseminate news. It's a time of opportunity and challenge. Brand guru Scott Bedbury, back in South Africa, will also be sharing some of his thoughts on this and global branding challenges tomorrow in a one-day seminar, Tuesday 18 September. We'll keep you updated on our breaking news blog: http://blog.bizcommunity.com. Our intrepid production and sales team have also put their love of sport into action with our new fun sports blog for the rugby world cup: http://sport.bizcommunity.com.
Read it here first! Louise Marsland, editor@bizcommunity.co. Marketing news: marketingnews@bizcommunity.co. Responses to this column welcomed on our blog.