UNNOTICED GLOBAL developments are something of an obsession with me. I had my attention stirred recently by a lot of media attention that focused on the whole continent of Africa being officially expected to lower its economic growth-rate this year. But I was stirred even more (with angry disappointment) by how few media outlets stressed how phenomenally high the continent’s growth-rate has been over the past twenty years.   

THE SOUTH BY SOUTH-WEST Festival of 2016 finally finished this week. In the end it seemed, more sprawlingly than ever, to take over the city of Austin for even longer than I previously remember – and I’ve now been an attendee for a dozen years or so.

Dateline: Austin, Texas —  IT CAME. AND IT WENT. In flash, it seemed.

“SXSW Interactive”, or the digital tech part of that annual multimedia extravaganza called the South by SouthWest festivals is now over – and it was on steroids this year, opening with the first-ever appearance by a sitting US President.   He provided, by the way, a text-book Obamite keynote address, sharp and deeply engaged while calmly de-fraying the fray of bitter controversy.

THOUGH NEVER A HUGE ATTENTION-GETTER, the Best Foreign Language category in this weekend’s Oscar awards contains, as often, some very powerful cinema among its five nominees.

And if the runes cast before us by earlier rounds of the awards season are any guide, one film is close to being a shoo-in for the ‘Best Foreign’ statuette.

THOUGH FOR MANY OF US THE YEAR ahead may look pretty dismal, 2016 promises one great breakthrough – a major step toward ending Africa’s particular and hobbling form of the great Digital Divide.

MY YEAR-END SCHADENFREUDE-FEST has rolled around again, all too soon.

It’s been a pretty good year for some striking media corrections and apologies.

And for some telling non-apologies.

SO, HYSTERICAL XENOPHOBIA courses through the US media about Muslim people seeking refuge – stoked by “unhinged” demagoguery – and lunatic ideas get discussed like an outright ban against incomers selected on the basis of their religion.

As America approaches the holiday season, its mass media often get onto a seasonal kick of reporting the fate, in that somewhat sanctimonious phrase, of “those less fortunate than ourselves” at home and abroad.    

A classic case is the well-intentioned New York Times‘ combination of reporting and charity fundraising known as The Neediest Cases, which concentrates on regional New York relief efforts.

THE NOVEMBER ISSUE OF VANITY FAIR carries an in-depth and mostly laudatory portrait of that legendary giant of an American writer, Tom Wolfe.

IT’S SAD AND DISPIRITING that a vital message is currently failing to fully get through – the message that healthy people can really easily help other, very sick people.

JUST ABOUT EVERY COMMUNICATOR has to make a choice – “am I talking to a broad mass audience, or a specialized sector?” Some of us make it as an overall career choice – others as a tactical option when particular issues provoke us into highlighting them.

I’M A SCOT BY ORIGIN. So in matters of culture the word “fringe” can mean only one thing. That would be Edinburgh, evoking in part the annual international festival there, but even more its huge and much livelier attendant program of fringe events.

WHILE THE MEDIA UNIVERSE, or at least the American media universe, gets ever more besotted with the Republican Party’s bafflement over Donald Trump, and Fox News’ showcasing of the party eating itself alive, and with Hillary Clinton’s private email server supposedly threatening her securing of the Democratic nomination … there sits quietly a powerful news story that is gaining precious little attention.

THERE IS SOME SMALL COMFORT since the horrific murders at Emanuel AME Church, Charleston to see South Carolina at last removing the Confederate battle-flag from the state’s Capitol grounds, and dispatching it to the relic room.   

JUST DAYS AFTER his ballyhooed business ‘restructuring’, Rupert Murdoch is seen to be moving in two opposing directions.

If we believe the official 21st Century Fox announcement, the empire’s paterfamilias is withdrawing backwards. Doing a fade-out, as it were (to cite an Old Media visual effect) by yielding the CEO seat to his younger son James Murdoch.

The Al Jazeera TV news organization that began in Qatar missed a great opportunity when it started Al Jazeera America (AJAM), using the cable channel it bought from ex-Vice President Al Gore‘s Current TV.  

MUCH ABOUT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CAN be quite monumentally awe-inspiring. It’s designed to be, after all.

Often it’s in a good way. From the Pope’s elevating addresses to vast crowds in St Peter’s Square – as well as to the Orbe, our wider electronically-watching world – all the way through to that same Pope memorably washing the feet of disabled men and women.    But the horrific worldwide scandal of sexual abuse by priests, and the Church’s decades of cover-up, will inevitably fall into another category

IT’S AS A MEDIA GUY that I’ve gotten really fascinated by elephants. In large part, anyway.

Along with many pachyderm enthusiasts around the world, I’ve long been in awe of these animals’ gigantic majesty, their social cohesion, and their well-appreciated smarts – including of course that renowned and enviable memory of theirs.

But their skill as masterful communicators is what has come to impress me most of all.

Dateline: Austin, Texas – AT THE SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST festival (SXSW) you can obviously get to really binge on movies, and here that means real movies, shown on – gratifyingly – the big screen. 

Dateline: Austin Texas – THE ANNUAL SHINDIG that is South By Southwest is never unenjoyable for a media-hound. How could it be – with its abundant, tripartite combination of a Film division, an entire Internet universe (or more officially the ‘Interactive’ division) and the all-pervasive backdrop of a Music festival?