First impressions of South African biz journalism

I met this morning with some writers and editors at Media24, which is one of the large media houses in Johannesburg. I was told that these people were some of the savviest business journalists in the country, and they did not disappoint.

I had planned to do a short session on reading company financial statements, including an income statement, a balance sheet and a cash-flow statement. But about 10 minutes into the conversation, they made it clear that they knew how to read an income statement and wanted to go straight to cash flow, which we did.

Later, I spent an hour talking to them about markets coverage. Once we got past some of the terminology issues — mutual funds are called unit trusts in South Africa — the conversation went well. One of the things that I found interesting is that there is little or no coverage of the commodities market, a surprise given the importance of gold prices to South Africa.

Afterward, I traveled to the University of Pretoria and met with journalism professor Kobus Schoeman and some of his students. Schoeman said that it is his impression that business journalism in South Africa is in its infancy and that business reporters make more money here than most other reporters.

As far as the students, at least one of them expressed an interest in business journalism and said that she was focusing on economics as part of her studies.

One thing I am struggling with: English vs. Afrikaans. Most of the people I am talking to can speak both languages, while I can only speak the former. However, Schoeman told me that all of the journalism textbooks in South Africa are written in English.