Abstract
This extended review essay maps recent titles written by practicing journalists and journalists turned academics. The analysis focuses on the Race Talk (Botma), Media Freedom (Rabe), News in the Age of Social Media (Daniels), and Behind the Headlines (Harber). These studies follow earlier analyses, Geopolitics and Power (Wasserman) and Media in Postapartheid South Africa (Jacobs). An intersecting track are the exposés written by journalists like Dasnois and Whitfield (Paper Tiger), Harmse (on SABC), Krige (SABC 8), and Sundaram (Gupta TV). How each frames history, researcher position and the respective writing styles are discussed. My argument is that academic studies should be read in concert with works written by journalists because abstract frames of reference tend to bracket out the daily nitty gritty struggles within newsrooms, especially within the current conjecture. The conclusion suggests that whatever the alleged flaws of the ‘mainstream media’ (Radebe), is that individual journalists (and others) are the ones telling the story behind the story in the slew of books that have been recently published on state and private sector corruption.