South African journalism students intersted in biz reporting

I spent Thursday in South Africa traveling to two different universities to talk to groups of journalism students about the joys and wonders of business reporting.

In the morning, I went to Potchefstroom, about 90 minutes away from Johannesburg, to talk to a group of students at the University of the North-West. In a group of about 35 students, only three were male, and the rest were female. Potchefstroom, and the university, reminded me of the U.S. Midwest.

After explaining to them what business journalism was like in the States, I hit them over the head with what they really cared about — the number of business journalism jobs tripled between 1988 and 2000 in the United States, according to statistics I’ve seen. In addition, I told them that business reporters often made more money than other journalists. After that, they were like putty in my hand.

The same strategy worked later at the University of Johannesburg, where I spoke to an honors journalism class taught by Nadia van der Merwe. There was one student in that class interning at a computer publication here in the city.

Business journalism is not as developed in South Africa as it is in the States, but what I am learning is that they watch what’s going on in the States carefully in terms of developments in the field. For example, there are publications in South Africa that publish rankings of the top public companies in the country, much like daily newspapers and magazines do in the U.S. In addition, some newspapers in South Africa have published special tech sections, a common strategy by U.S. dailies in the late 1990s.

Tomorrow I spend the day running a workshop at the Independent Newspaper offices. They publish The Star, the largest daily in Johannesburg, which has a section called Business Report.