Congratulations go to South African photographer Jodi Bieber, who was announced on Friday, 11 February 2011, as the winner of the 2010 World Press Photo of the Year. She has previously won eight World Press Photo awards and is only the second South African photographer to win the highest honour in this contest. In other news, there's been a huge stink caused by the DA's blacklisting of a journalist after the political party has been championing South African media freedom. There's also a huge furore over the Sunday Times and Times Live, through misleading headlines and posters, misquoting/misrepresenting U2 frontman Bono's stance with respect to the singing of struggle songs and Malema and "Shoot the Boer" and resulting in international media coverage also getting the wrong end of the stick. All of this, it can be argued, does not bode well when it comes to preventing the ANC from imposing a media appeals tribunal on South Africa's media, and it comes at a time when the Press Council of South Africa is about to begin holding a series of public hearings countrywide over the next few weeks. Starting this Thursday and Friday, 17 and 18 February, at Wits University in Johannesburg, the council invites the public to discuss the review of its press code, complaints procedure, constitutions and the role of the press ombudsman in South Africa's print media. Public meetings will also be held in Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein throughout late February and early March. It's a real pity that that the Cape Town leg happens to coincide with one day of the Design Indaba conference (can you believe it's Design Indaba next week?). It's also Mobile World Congress time again in Barcelona, Spain, and we've created a Twitterfall to track South Africans attending this event. Feel free to let us know whom else should be added to our Twitter list. Talking about time, last night in Johannesburg it was showtime for U2 and its 360^o tour - the very first rock concert to be held at FNB Stadium aka Soccer City since the 2010 FIFA World Cup. And boy oh boy does the stadium work incredibly well as a concert venue (let's not talk about the travel and food logistics, though)! I can't wait until the Gautrain is fully functional and I can catch a Gautrain bus to the Rosebank Gautrain station to take the Gautrain to Park Station and then the Metro Rail to just outside the stadium. Lastly, as promised, a 1.53MB, 97-pages-long pdf collating all of the Biz 2011 Trends pieces in one place is finally available for download! Happy (overly commercial) Valentine's Day! Simone Puterman (@SimoneBiz) Managing editor PS The latest Ornico Ad Showcase features TV ads for PPC Cement, Miller's Rock the Boat, Yves Saint Laurent, Standard Bank and Audi A1, and radio ads for Spur Steak Ranches, Mercedes-Benz, East Rand Mall, Kulula and Cardies.
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