General research question

What is the state of arts reporting and coverage in Cape Town’s community newspapers? Among the criticisms of the media assessed during June and July 2005 for the Hisses

and Whistles study (MMP, 2006), was that arts journalists were producing shallow, event-

driven reporting, fed to them by publicists and marketers and that much of the arts reporting in the South African mainstream media focused more on what’s happening, than critically

engaging with why it’s happening or the importance of the content being presented (MMP, 2006: 7). The MMP’s study revealed that only 25% of the sample could be classified as being analytical or critical. While much of this may also be true for the articles assessed for this study, it must be noted that the stories which were published under reporters’ bylines, stood out

from unattributed articles in that they were well-researched, well-written and of a high journalistic standard. The only content in my sample which could be described as critical or analytical were one short theatre review and 13 book reviews which amounted to about 4.5% of the research sample.

In her reflection of the role of arts journalists and the changes facing the sector, Maupin, who worked as an arts writer for 26 years and described her job as “building bridges between companies and their audiences”, laments the fact that bloggers have credentials “vetted by no one by themselves”, and that her job became more focused on writing news about the arts than the arts itself (Maupin, 2010: 12). This is supported by Green (2010: 3) who points out that many art critics have been required to take on additional responsibilities, often unrelated to arts reporting , and echoed by the writers interviewed for this study who all fulfil multiple roles in the newsroom in addition to writing about the arts. Jokelainen (2013: 10), however has pointed out that writing about events is an unavoidable part of the job, noting that arts journalists needed to provide “expertise, enjoyable writing ... insight and context – and some consumer services”.

Hisses and Whistles also found that advertising and publicity played a significant role in

shaping how the arts and entertainment were covered in South Africa (MMP, 2006: 5). While my study did not focus on advertising, qualitative content analysis revealed that, indeed, much of the arts and entertainment reporting in my research sample were event-driven, with the vast majority of the items being what’s on notices, the primary purpose of which is to publicise events.

Another area in which the results of my research corresponded with those of the 2006 study, was the discipline which got the most coverage. In both cases this was music, being the focus of 33% of the Hisses and Whistles sample (MMP, 2006: 5) and 51% of my sample. In the MMP’s study, music was followed by film (23%), literature (13%), theatre (12%), visual arts (8%), mixed genre (8%) and dance being the focus of just 3% of the coverage. In my sample, the numbers were different, with theatre following music, with 14% of the sample focusing on this genre. This was followed by comedy (11%), visual arts (8%), dance (6%), literature (6%) and other (4%).

While in the Hisses and Whistles study reviews – at 23% of the sample – made up the largest portion of the arts and entertainment items counted (MMP: 2006: 6), in my research sample, the vast majority of the arts and entertainment content was made up of notices (45%). On the list of the most common types of reporting in the MMP’s study, reviews were followed by listings (19%) – which are what’s referred to in my study as notices – features (15%), news

stories (15%), briefs (5%), interviews (4%), with opinion or commentary only making up 2% of their sample. In my research, the most common type of reporting after notices, were pictures with extended captions (16%), profiles (13%), stories about upcoming events (9%), snippets (7%), book reviews (4.5%), competitions (2%), with reports on past events and arts- and entertainment-related letters making up less than 1% of the sample each.

While the Hisses and Whistles study compared the focus of the arts content in terms of whether it was South African or international, because the focus of my study were community newspapers, whose mandate is to cover local news, I compared content in terms of it being local (that is, relating to artists from Cape Town), national or international. In the former study, 65% of the content was about South African arts, 32% about the arts in Europe and the USA, 2% about arts in te rest of Africa, and only 1% about the arts in Asia (MMP, 2006: 6). In my research sample, local news dominated by far, with this category making up 84% of the sample, international arts and entertainment news, 12% of the sample, and national, 4%.

Green is among the researchers who have written about the drastic cutbacks of arts coverage as well as a decline in the number of people employed by newspapers to write about the arts (2010: 2). While Green’s work focuses on the USA, the situation was similar at the community newspapers assessed for this study, with the publications either having no

dedicated arts writers, or sharing staff who focus on the arts, with other newspapers. In addition to this, limited space and even more limited resources were dedicated to the coverage of the arts and entertainment. Hisses and Whistles too, had highlighted staff shortages, limited budgets and space constraints as some of the newsroom challenges which are impacting arts reporting in South Africa. These mirrored the challenges raised by editors and reporters who write about the arts, who were interviewed for my study, with all of them lamenting the lack of space available for arts reporting as well as the fact that no additional resources – be they human or financial – were available to improve coverage of the arts and entertainment in community newspapers. Added to this, the MMP’s study highlighted as a concern for the future of arts journalism, the “lack of young, skilled arts journalists coming up through the ranks” (MMP, 2006: 6).

What this comparison of Hisses and Whistles and my study makes apparent, is that despite the scope of two studies being very different, with the former being a national study spanning different media and the latter having been conducted on a much smaller scale and focused only on community newspapers, the challenges are very similar and both paint a fairly bleak picture of arts journalism in South Africa and in Cape Town. And while the respondents

in my study all expressed a sincere desire to cover the arts well, they simply did not have the resources to do so.

Also apparent is that despite the two studies having been done 10 years apart, many of the same challenges exist, particularly so when it comes to the lack of critical engagement with the arts by reporters and the reliance on unattributed content and what’s on notices to fill the entertainment pages. A telling indicator of the limited human resources made available to covering the arts for the community papers is the fact that only 43 of the 285 arts and entertainment items counted were stories written by reporters. But even these were largely personality and event driven, with none of them analysing or critiquing the work they were writing about, or which the person they were writing about was involved in.