REVIEW
Southern African Media Directory 1999
ISBN 9991672842, 76pp, 1999, The Media Institute
of Southern Africa, Private Bag 13386, 21 Johan Albrecht Street, Windhoek,
Namibia, e-mail: bright@ingrid.misa.org.na, price not reported, pb.
Review by Hans M Zell
Hans M Zell is a publishing consultant specialising in scholarly publishing,
journals publishing management and reference book publishing, 11 Richmond
Road, PO Box 56, Oxford, OX1 2SJ, England. Tel +44 1865 511428, fax
+44 1865 311534, e-mail: hzell@dial.pipex.com
Published by the Media Institute of Southern
Africa MISA) - an NGO dedicated to promoting media freedom and diversity
and a pluralistic African press - this is the second edition of a useful
guide to the media throughout Southern Africa. Handsomely produced in
A4 size format it includes a total of 972 entries, which represents
a very substantial increase in the number listed in the first edition.
Arranged by countries, information provided on each country includes
extensive listings of daily and weekly newspapers, periodicals and magazines,
news agencies, printers and publishers, radio and TV broadcasting stations,
media consultants and advertising agencies, video production services,
media associations, media training institutions, government offices
dealing with information, and Internet service providers (ISPs). For
the most part address details are very full and include electronic contact
information. All listings are preceded by basic factual information
on each country, and this is followed by a two or three page overview
of the current state of the media in each country. Some advertising
is also included.
Whereas the sections on newspapers, for example,
seem to be fairly comprehensive, those on book publishers (for some
countries listed under 'Printing and Publishing', for others under 'Book
Publishers' or, misleadingly, 'Printing Publishers') are very poor or
uneven. They are good, for example for Namibia and Botswana, adequate
for Malawi or Zambia, but totally inadequate for Zimbabwe (eight entries
for printers, 22 magazine listings, a large number of newspapers but
no listings at all for book publishers), and non-existent for South
Africa, which contains two entries under 'Printing and Publishers',
but one of these is in fact the Printing Industry Federation of South
Africa, and the other the Publishers Association of South Africa (PASA).
In spite of this weakness, the directory is nevertheless
a very useful reference and networking tool for the media in Southern
Africa; it is probably also the most current resource (with the exception
of South African media, which are covered more comprehensively elsewhere).
African studies libraries will want to acquire this directory, as will
libraries with media collections. [end] [BPN, no 29, 2001, p 19.]
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