I don’t know if you’ve been watching The Dan Corder Show on eNCA at all. I enjoy Corder’s account on X, so I’d never really felt the need to investigate what he has to say on a more traditional platform.
Then I stumbled across a critique of one of his shows by political strategist Gareth van Onselen, which included a cutting attack on one of Corder’s guests, journalist Verashni Pillay. As is the way with these things, it intrigued me enough to get me to watch a few of the shows.
At first, I was tempted to read Van Onselen’s intervention as petty sniping motivated by a history involving past arguments about the DA. But that would be doing a disservice to the protagonists. What if Van Onselen, Pillay and Corder are not primarily driven by personal animosity (to the subject matter, and/or to each other), and in fact their spat is structural, rather than personal? Perhaps what we have here is a contretemps about different ideas of what constitutes news journalism, and framed by ideas of who the audience for that journalism is.
But let’s begin by looking at what Van Onselen wrote, in his own words. It was a 22-part thread on X, so I’ll just pull out the relevant bits.
Van Onselen prefaces his critique by telling us that he understands the concept of the show. Here, he tells us, is “a thread on the interview with Verashni Pillay about the GNU [government of national unity] negotiations, on the Dan Corder Show (DCS) last night. First, some context. The point of the DCS seems to be to mock and ridicule politics and politicians. This is good and necessary. Humour can bring insight.”
But is that the point of the show? For me, mocking politics is just one of the enabling devices Corder uses to talk about the news of the day. What he is actually doing is presenting the news in a very particular way, to a very particular audience. Van Onselen is correct, of course, when he says humour can bring insight. But he seems to have a very definite idea of what constitutes insight, and indeed of what constitutes analysis.
He writes: “At one point, Pillay admits she has no idea what the minister in the Presidency does. Corder has to explain. Typically, when you get an expert on, it’s the other way round. But perhaps the DCS [is] part social outreach programme, helping failing analysts be the best they can be. So, to start with, we don’t exactly have a big gun. Pillay is a Twitter journalist, who rehashes what she reads online. As a result, there is nothing new, not a single insight, just a summary of what everyone has already read, encased in her own brand of moral incredulity.”
He points out several detailed analyses that he says Pillay and Corder have missed, or got wrong; moments where they have not been exhaustive in asking or answering questions. The inference, then, is that they have only done half a job, and a bad one at that.
Van Onselen uses five tweets (which I don’t have space to quote), to detail some of the things that they’ve left out, essential questions that he feels are requisite for a professional interview, one that should necessarily provide people with everything they need to know to be fully informed about the GNU: “Now, a few things about what is not covered in this interview — the stuff that would actually be helpful to a viewer: what are the key portfolios to control from each party’s perspective and why, which portfolios are proposed as leverage, rather than actual goals …”
His critique of Pillay continues. “Odd for an expert to admit she has no insight into the thing she [is] analysing. At one point she says she is ‘surprised’ the DA did not go with a confidence/supply arrangement — the DA would have known there would be ‘policy clashes’ … At this point, after admitting she has no idea what the minister in the Presidency does, she says ‘I am not sure if that is the position John Steenhuisen is going after’. Look, is there anything you are sure of? What is the point of you exactly?”
“What is the point of you exactly?” It’s a good question, though not the way Van Onselen means it, which is also just a nasty gibe. It’s a good question when we ask it a different way. What is the point of The Dan Corder Show, of the way it is set up as a contextualising monologue, followed by a dialogue with a guest? (I’ve only watched three, so forgive me if this structure changes in other episodes.)
What Corder is actually doing is presenting the news in a very particular way, to a very particular audience
The Financial Times’s FT Strategies recently released a report on “Next Gen News: Understanding the Audiences of 2030”. The report goes into some detail about what will drive and constitute a news audience in 2030. Here is how it summarises the problem.
Gen Z, the report tells us, “understand the value that news can play in their lives, but are often disinterested or frustrated with how it’s being delivered to them. There is an existing and growing gap between the news experience the next generation wants and what they’re currently being provided.”
We’ve all seen the results of that in South Africa, with the closing of certain news brands — not just print, which is to be expected, but digital brands as well. Looking at the global picture, FT Strategies finds that “in the short term, it’s more commercially viable for traditional news brands to focus on older consumers with larger disposable incomes who are more easily monetised via subscriptions or advertising. As a result, it means they too often fail to satisfy the needs of the next generation of news consumers who will play an important role in their long-term sustainability.”
Is Van Onselen’s critique of The Dan Corder Show a clash of the old vs the new, the traditional vs the upstart? Is he a remnant of an old idea of journalism, one that is not necessarily obsolete now, but which is only one way to do journalism, rather than the way? And is The Dan Corder Show, and the relatable guests, an attempt to make news that will appeal to an audience evolving into the next generation of news consumers?
This is what the FT Stategies report says the next generation of news consumers will look for, and look like. For them, the ideal news experience has to come from a trusted source (“I want information from a source that I know and trust”); have personal significance (“I want information that is significant to me and those I care about”); and should be what the report terms “desired storytelling” (“I want information presented in a way that works best for me”).
When you dig a little deeper into those categories, it gets interesting. For example, the research found that what constitutes trustworthiness for next-gen audiences “can be somewhat different from previous waves of consumers”.
“Our research participants shared that there was no definitive rule of thumb for determining a piece of content’s trustworthiness. Rather, there are three subfactors that they weigh up.
“They want to know that the people presenting news to them ‘know their stuff and I can count on them’. They place greater emphasis on the credibility of lived experiences and topic specialisation than on awards, education and brand association. And they want to feel seen and represented by the media industry, and they want the news to be more accessible, so that they can meaningfully engage with it, without feeling ashamed or lost because, as one person said, ‘I want words that I understand and a tone that is welcoming.’”
The report found that the next generation exhibits emerging news consumption behaviours that are distinct in four ways (I’ll look at three). One is what they call “sensemaking through digital discourse”, where they rely on the personal opinions of others in digital contexts to frame and understand the news. Another is “filtering through trusted networks”, where “they seek out sources of information from people that they know, or feel like they know … in real life”. And a third is “sophisticated searching”, where “they have honed their own sophisticated search skills on social media platforms and online communities to help them manage information overload”.
It strikes me that The Dan Corder Show is an attempt to speak to the next-generation news audiences defined in the FT Strategies report. While Van Onselen’s critique could be seen as valid when applied to a different sort of journalism, and on a different platform, it’s misplaced when it comes to the news relationship between The Dan Corder Show and its audience. The new news consumers want the news framed for them by someone they identify with, and then to seek out more information if they feel the need, using their “sophisticated search skills”.
The FT Strategies report says: “Ambitiously, we hope news producers agree that by observing the needs and behaviours of the next generation of news consumers, news producers can anticipate the eventual behaviours of most news consumers in the future.”
That’s what news producers should be aiming for, and key to that is understanding that there are many different types of journalism, and in the very near future, some of them are going to disappear.
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