Journalists sometimes feel aggrieved when they come in for criticism that implies they do not measure up to some previous golden age of reporting. I've been an adjudicator for the Sanlam Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism, among others, since 2002 and almost every year someone asks me whether the standard of financial journalism has improved or declined. I find the question impossible to answer, because while one category of entries may decline in quality one year, another may have m...read more

Reg RumneyThe big surprise in the Budget this year was that there was a big surprise. It should be straightforward if not exactly a yawn. The presentation of the national Budget does not contain the big shocks of the apartheid years.The ANC in government has adopted an approach of much greater transparency. The biggest change has been the adoption of three-year rolling budgets and the presentation of a Medium-Term Budget Policy towards the end of the year, in around October.This sets out the mai...read more

As a performance, Pravin Gordhan’s maiden Budget speech deserved as much applause as he got for the content. Perhaps he deserved more spontaneous applause than his jokes achieved — he had to chide the MPs.   And yet if the comments of intelligent and educated young people are anything to go by, I have some real pointers for Pravin   Evaluating the speech as communication was one of the tasks I assigned to a group of students this week.   I asked journalism postgraduate stude...read more