The song remains the same

It's the message not the medium that's important

- Jim Freeman

My first mentor in journalism was Chris van Gass, at the time Pretoria bureau chief of The Star newspaper and former member of the respected Argus Africa News Service (AANS). With AANS he was a so-called "fireman" who would be dispatched to hotspots throughout Southern Africa as his skills were needed.

Forty-something years later, Chris is correspondent extraordinaire at a weekly newspaper that serves the interests of the people of the Garden Route. He investigates and reports - as the saying has it, without fear or favour - but on the day we got together a month ago, we spent a couple of hours at Barrington's in Plettenberg Bay.

He'd been trying to twist my arm to pay a visit for quite some time and, when the readers of the newspaper chose Barrington's as the best brewery and makers of the finest hamburgers in its readership area, the time seemed right.

As two old newspapermen, it wasn't long before our conversation turned to the perceived deterioration of journalism standards and "imminent" demise of the printed media.