When the decision to print the paper was made, returns from the US election were coming in very slowly and time was running out before the deadline for the edition. The Tribune staff, based on the early returns, decided Dewey would be the next President. After the newspaper was delivered to the street, more returns came in and showed that Truman would be the ultimate winner and be re-elected as President. The already delivered “error” newspapers were gathered for return by staff members sent out to pick them up from newsstands and homes in the Chicago area. Not all were collected, however, and the photo of the victorious President Truman holding the paper aloft has become iconic.

While clearly no-where near as disastrous as that, I was amused this morning to find that the Weekender newspaper dated 25 April 2009 has made a similar mistake by “calling” the results of the Western Cape poll prematurely.

“DA resports to coalition for control of the Cape” says the headline, and the story goes on to say:
“Intense negotiations between political parties in the Western Cape are on the cards as they try to forge coalitions of sufficient strength to take control of the province. The horse-trading will be necessary because of the Democratic Alliance’s failure to win an outright majority in the province…”

Hmmm. Ooops. With 51.33% of the vote in her handbag, Ms Zille is now to be Premier of the Western Cape, regardless of what coalition she manages to forge. Of course she may still decide to enter into an alliance with other parties, but the point is she doesn’t have to. She has won.

I’m surprised the Weekender got it so wrong. As a Cape Town resident I have been watching the results closely for the past 36 hours. And for most of them the party hasn’t dipped below 50% at all and, when it did, it was only for a short while. If they wanted to err on the side of caution they should have printed the opposite story “Majority seems likely for the DA” would have been a more accurate, safer and, as it turned out, correct headline.

Just shows the perils of Old Media who should, in an age where there is instant news all around us, capitalise on their one biggest strength – offer great insight and detailed analysis. In a rolling news environment when a story is still live when you go to print, don’t take any chances because it gives new media pundits the chance to ridicule you and tweak your nose. Tweak tweak.

Today I’ve been working with the TV on, occasionally popping through to the lounge to see how things are progressing. While at my PC I’ve been checking a couple of websites regularly and in my car a couple of times I’ve listened to some radio news broadcasts.

All in all I have been disappointed with the way the media have handled the results release. Sure we all knew the ANC was going to win – but the other critical factors in the elections (that 2/3 majority everyone is obsessing about; the fate of the Western Cape; the overall impact of COPE; the final death throes of so many tiny parties) are all things that interest me. Having recently watched the unfolding American elections on CNN, Sky and BBC as well as online I had a fair idea of what worked for me, and had fairly high expectations that South Africa’s media would rise to the challenge.

Online was a major disappointment. IOL simply pulled their election stories into a single section of their website, but didn’t offer anything extra. Same too for the M&G (except for their, as always, ahem, exceptionally produced podcast, obviously). EWN.co.za (the online version of 702 and Cape Talk’s news) tried valiantly but have been let down by poor design that makes them look static, wordy and boring. Stick to radio guys, or call in the online experts to build the site for you. The online publication that seemed to “get” the potential of the web was The Times. A great online election section, and by pulling together news, multimedia, blogs, social media and community votes in one place, they managed to position themselves as “the only place you need to go” for election coverage – presumably the Holy Grail of the day.

The coolest feature I found online was News24′s interactive map, updated frequently throughout the day with the numbers. Easy to use and pretty effective, it became my default “numbers machine” during the day. But then it let me down. Right now it is 7:45pm, the last time the site was updated was 5:52pm. As a breaking news story with constantly shifting numbers, that just isn’t good enough, and News24 has squandered a massive opportunity. It also meant that my irritation levels were such that I can’t name them the best election site of the day despite the fact that the rest of their site was on a par with The Times – so I’ll give the Golden Lankester award (catchy, I might trademark it like that Oscar guy did) to The Times.

(And just in case Matt gives me a hard time about my News24 comments – here’s the screengrab to prove it.)

If News24 let a great opportunity slip through their fingered, the SABC didn’t even get their hands to the ball. This morning I switched the TV on around 10am wanting to get rolling results. The SABC was treating its viewers to a heady mix of Learning Channel, soapie repeats and Takalani Sesame. So much for the National Broadcaster. Fortunately the eNews channel could come to the rescue – not only on its dedicated channel but simulcast on its regular channel during the day.

The e presenters are generally pretty good. Today was the first time I’ve seen Dan Moyane on the channel. Dan is one of the nicest, most genuine and brightest guys in broadcasting, and I’ve always enjoyed him on both 702 and SAfm. But today he looked slightly uncomfortable. The peculiar seating arrangement didn’t help and at times he looked more like Debra Patta’s bodyguard than anything else.

The e coverage remained of a fairly high standard but the quality of their graphics left much to be desired. I wanted pie charts and graphs, a vote-o-meter on the left hand side of the screen throughout updating the latest figures, even when they felt it necessary to talk about weather or sport. Instead we got an occasional hard to read bar graph that didn’t offer much insight. And they perpetuated their ridiculous “have the presenters stand around” philosophy throughout, even when Jeremy and Redi came on and the difference in their height was ridiculously accentuated.

So back to the SABC it was and having dispatched the crappy daytime television and woken up to the fact thar there was in fact an election unfolding, Tim Modise appeared calm and in charge, as he always does. Even when breathless and largely amateurish field reporters went live to report on the fact that there wasn’t very much to report on. The SABC’s graphics were better than eTV’s – more readable and more useful.

Radio-wise I don’t have much to comment on because all I had to listen to was SAfm and Cape Talk. Both seemed to do ok, but as always the slickness of Cape Talk’s news operation and the intelligence and quality of their reporters put them head and shoulders above the rest.

My 2c worth – a rather incomplete overview of the media, I’m afraid, but some of us have a real job that needs to occupy some of our attention!

In the internet age buzz is everything. Heroes are made and broken online, and those who breathe the rarefied air at the top of the social media stratosphere are the kingmakers.

So here, then, is a question. If the US were to hold their election tomorrow, who would win? Too broad a question…and one answered already by dozens of polls and surveys by news organisations across the US. So let us narrow it a bit. What if the only voters were those who are active online?
Pew Internet & American Life Project has some interesting data on internet usage. They reckon that 73% of adults in the US use the internet. The most active age range is 18-29, of whom 90% use the internet, closely followed by 30 – 49 (85%) and 50 -64 (70%). Internet usage is highest among the wealthy – 95% of those who earn $75 000 or more go online. So if you’re young, rich and American, it’s hard to imagine you doing anything else other than logging on, writing emails, checking your Facebook status and watching videos on YouTube. No surprises there.
OK so now we have our electorate, how about our candidates? In the internet generation, anything goes. So let’s put the real candidates on the ballot – Barack Obama and  John McCain. But we need a control group….someone who is firmly a part of the Internet generation and is capable of creating a kind of buzz all of their own. Britney Spears. Perfect.

Now to the voting process. Instead of voting in a polling booth behind a little curtain, let’s hold the election completely online and elect a President based only on the buzz that each candidate creates among the net faithful. Surely there can be no better sign of endorsement than someone giving of their valuable internet time to read about and watch someone? It’s easy to put an “X” next to a name. It’s a truer test of popularity if, in the privacy of your own home and in your own time, you are searching for and consuming information about someone. Because in a voting booth you have limited choice. Online you have access to information and news about millions of people. And so you make choices that, in today’s number crunching world, can lead us to all sorts of confusion.

But before I go any further – a caveat. I did Standard Grade maths at school. I have never studied statistics. Taking what I am about to do seriously would be like going up to a 7 year old playing “Doctor Doctor” and asking them to perform open heart surgery on you. Or asking Richard Catto for a sane opinion. Don’t do it. This is amateur stuff, and I make no apologies for it.

I’ve taken several indicators of online “buzz” – an attempt at trying to see how much noise each of our three candidates is making online. These indicators are: YouTube Channel views,  YouTube Subscribers,  number of YouTube video results, the number of fans each has on Facebook, and the number of members each has in a “negative” group on Facebook. Then I looked at Digg and Del.ico.us and measured how much each candidate features there, and wrapped it all up in a simple Google number – the number of pages that emerge as search results for the candidate’s name, and the number of Blog mentions tracked for each candidate by Google.

Here are the results of my number crunching, all neatly arranged in a graph.

(click on the image to see it larger)

The result, I am happy to say, is heartening. Britney Spears will not be the next President of the USA or Cyberspace or anything anytime soon (although some would argue that Sarah Palin is not that far off. I’m just saying.). Barack Obama leads the way with the lion’s share of the electorate’s attention.
With his youthful message of change it is hardly surprising that Obama commands cyberspace. He announced his running mate by SMS, he has teams of people just focused on the internet buzz he is creating (*waves – hi guys!*) And, let’s face it, watching John McCain try and master the internet is like watching your dad dance at a wedding.

So there’s my poll. I’ve done my bit. Pundits…..Go!