Oscar's Twittering world
There's nothing like a good murder mystery to sell newspapers is there? And it doesn't get much better than the Oscar Pistorius case which has all the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster. Good looking national icon who has overcome disability to become an Olympian kills model girlfriend on the morning of Valentine's day. One moment of madness, a lifetime of sadness.
The Pistorius version is that he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder early in the morning and, in the pitch black, pumped four bullets from his 9mm into a bathroom door before checking whether his girlfriend was safe in bed. The prosecution's version of events that evening are rather different and suggest that Mr Pistorius may have intended to kill Reeva Steenkamp.
Bearing in mind that all this information has come spewing out from a mere bail hearing I think it fair to say that we can look forward to a spectacularly sensational murder trial. Whatever else Oscar Pistorius may have done, at least he's delayed the demise of the print media.
It's also been bonanza time for SA journos with all sorts of South African talking heads (this one included) invited to pen articles for foreign newspapers and appear on TV to give their impressions of how Oscargate is affecting the nation's psyche. One welcome side effect is that it eclipsed the lacklustre State of the Nation address and saved us all the trouble of looking for any substance in the President's rambling speech.
One of the most interesting things about the Pistorius affair though is the amount of social media activity it has spawned. I may be wrong but I think the news of the shooting was first broken on Twitter by Beeld, closely followed by 702's Barry Bateman and his must have been one of the most followed Twitter accounts since the shooting. Journalists at the bail hearing are able to release short bulletins via Twitter and more established news sources like newspapers now follow up with the rather more detailed analysis.