I lost my blue tick verification status last week on Twitter so please don’t mind me if I seem a bit sensitive. Thanks so much, Elon Musk! But it did get me thinking about staying in your lane, writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.
I got my blue tick on the back of being a media professional and that my opinion in this space as a thought leader mattered. So, I’m too staying in my lane and reflecting on the recent happenings in our media landscape.
I read a few days ago with some consternation the demise of Die Kaapse Son. They’re looking to retrench 20 staff members and turning the robust daily into a weekly.
Did I miss the South African National Editors’ Forum’s angry statement or our media royalty’s analysis of this unfortunate turn of events? Or do they only wade in when it’s Iqbal Surve doing mad things for Independent Media or not paying his editorial staff their full salaries?
The gig is up, Iqbal. When you can’t pay your staff, even you know you’re in trouble. You had some cool ideas when your ownership stint started but then you became your own worst enemy at the expense of the reputation of the fine newspapers you own.
Do us all a favour and sell them to people who care about newspapers and their role in democracy.
Just over 20 years ago, the forward-thinking Deon du Plessis presented a blueprint for popular newspapers in the UK tabloid image. The then Irish-owned Independent Newspapers, where he was an exec, scoffed at the idea. The folks at Media24 loved it and The Daily Sun was born.
With headlines like ‘I found a penis in my tomato sauce’ and ‘A tokoloshe made me pregnant’, it captured the imagination of black urban people who weren’t represented by the established newspapers. It turned out to be an unprecedented success breaking record upon record of newspaper sales.
On the back of the success of Daily Sun, the Afrikaans equivalent Kaapse Son was born. Again, naughty headlines but also – critically – exposing stories and investigative journalism for a Cape Town coloured audience largely ignored by Die Burger.
Die Son made waves and prompted the dozy Irish owners of Independent Media to finally launch their own tabloid, Daily Voice, with the slogan ‘Sex, Skinner, Sport, Scandal’. And yours truly was part of the launch team.
Daily Voice was by far my most memorable experience in the many newsrooms I worked in. Karl Brophy was our editor – an Irishman who knew tabloid newspapers inside-out and instinctively knew the Cape Flats market, which the Cape Times and the Cape Argus were ignoring.
I had many talented colleagues breaking big stories that were quietly followed up by journos at the so-called traditional papers. Their initial laughter at us changed to a smirk. That smirk was wiped away when we and Die Son hit crazy numbers like 90 000 single-copy sales daily.
This was unheard of in the newspaper market over the previous 20-year period.
The crazy tabloids with the brash headlines were a force to be reckoned with. It was creating a new newspaper reader that would eventually graduate to ‘serious’ newspapers (was the patronising thinking). The management at Indy was still looking at its papers’ readers along racial lines: Cape Times for whites (the head), Argus for monied coloureds (the heart), and the Daily Voice for low-income coloured readers (described as ‘below the belt’).
I kid you not! Black people didn’t even come into the reckoning.
So, I was interested to read Media24 CEO Ishmet Davidson’s comments about the possible retrenchments at Die Son. The same man instrumental in the Daily Voice’s fortunes. (He even appeared on its front page once for being naughty. A brave move when you tackle the then general manager.)
It was Ishmet and his task team who delivered the first deadly strike against Daily Voice and inadvertently the traditional papers in the Independent Newspapers stable. They wanted a ‘cleaner’ Daily Voice with less raciness and vulgar language. Something the Pick n Pays of this world would be comfortable advertising in.
Because of the reach of Daily Voice and cheaper ad rates, it started cannibalising the Cape Times and Argus.
The same thing happened at Die Son and Die Burger. Now, for their sterling contribution to journalism for getting new audiences to read newspapers, the staff are being punished.
Interesting that the poorer-performing Die Burger is left untouched. Ishmet and the fellas at Media24 have decided that the Afrikaans readers of Die Burger (read white Afrikaans) are more important than the Afrikaans readers of Die Son (read coloured).
There are murmurs that the same media group, who once made a twee apology for its role in propping up the apartheid state, have been paying their coloured staff less than their white staff. It was the same kind of payrolls Iqbal found when he bought Indy. A white editor was being paid R20 000 more than me even though we were doing the same job.
The demise of Die Son is really a spit in the face of a growing and thriving coloured community of the Cape. But instead of the real management villains being held accountable, it is the brave men and women who boldly and successfully grew a new newspaper audience that is going to bear the brunt of poor newspapering decisions.
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