Today I resigned as editor of the Dispatch and a few minutes ago I broke the news to my team here at the paper. I have been editor since December 2008. When I was appointed it was a dream come true and deciding to give up this job was the hardest decision I’ve had to make in my career.
I would have liked to have been here for another couple of years at least I’ve learned over the years that sometimes opportunities arise at inopportune moments. Sometimes you have to take a breath and make a leap and that’s what I’m doing.
I will be joining Media24 who are a persistent lot. They won me over with a vision for journalism, for their titles and for their business that was powerful enough to get me to give up the job that I love and for which I had worked my whole career. I think that says a lot.
I have gone from being terrified at the job they have offered me (details from their side later although I suspect this will already be known on the grapevine), to relishing the challenge.
I must thank my current employers, Avusa, and the many people with whom I have worked over the last 15 years or so. These people have shaped my career and have given me access to amazing opportunities and adventures. Later I will pay tribute to everyone in more detail but I owe them what I have achieved so far and I’m grateful for what they have done for me.
I started my reporting career at the Dispatch 20 years ago and it was here that I was inspired by its history and traditions. People like Donald Woods and my first editor, Glyn Williams, were important role models in my career.
After I left the Dispatch for new adventures in alternative news agencies, radio and, later, the Sunday Times, I set myself a goal that one day I would return and be the Dispatch editor.
Two years ago that dream came true and seems like yesterday that I can remember standing in the newsroom and shedding a tear of pride when the news was announced that I would have the chance to lead this incredible paper.
Over the last two years I have had a wonderful time. It has been the highlight of my career so far. I have relished the relationship I have had with readers who regard this newspaper as something they own (which they do) and of which they are proud defenders (thank you).
At the Dispatch we have experimented with forms of journalism which are rarely used in South Africa like civic journalism (which is now a cornerstone of our newsroom) as well as with GIS-based reporting, we have played with Computer-Aided Reporting, covering stories on Twitter and blogging the news live on our website.
My team has won more reporting awards over the last couple of years than I can count including the biggies in Vodacom, Mondi Shanduka, Taco Kuiper, CNN Africa Journalist of the Year (for online). Over the last couple of years the Dispatch has built a reputation for being a big, little paper and it has built a reputation for pioneering investigative reporting in both print and online. It has been so rewarding to be a part of this.
But it has also been a tough time to be an editor of a newspaper in South Africa, and, I suppose, anywhere in the world. As I became editor the recession was breaking around our ears and one of the first things I had to do was oversee the departure of more than 20% of our editorial staff. It was tough, but it had to be done for the paper to survive and we did survive the recession, winning awards and performing well despite the financial and resource pressure that we faced.
The Dispatch did that because there is a fantastic team here from editorial, to circulation, printing, advertising, marketing and support services, and because we have some quality leaders.
Being an editor is probably one of the best jobs you could possibly want to do. It can be complex, frustrating, tedious and exhilarating. Every day is different and a challenge.
It’s going to be hard to say goodbye, but digging up stories, the coal-face of journalism, breaking a scoop… this is why I became a journalist in the first place. These are the things that get me up in the morning. These things are close to my heart and this new challenge takes me closer to doing that than an editorship allows.
I’ll be leaving at the end of August to start at Media24 on September 1 so there’s plenty of time for goodbyes. After 15 years at Avusa and its predecessors it’s like leaving a family.
The world cup is over and we’ve hardly had time to finish patting ourselves on the back before a new crisis rises.
Now we’re faced with this “xenophobia threat” which appears to have sprung unbidden even before our rainbow nation afterglow had a chance to fade.
I’m not normally drawn to conspiracy theories but I find the timing of this to be weird. It’s almost as if it were carefully planned to embarrass us.
The arrest of Sunday Mirror journalist Simon Wright in South Africa should have press freedom advocates in South Africa and elsewhere hopping up and down, demanding his release and the withdrawal of charges against him.
We all seem to have lost our tongues because of the World Cup and our patriotic fever. But from any angle I look at this, I can only see Wright’s arrest flowing from normal journalist work.
National police commissioner Bheki Cele seems to suggest that Wright was involved in British fan Pavlos Joseph gaining entry to the English team’s dressing room after a game in Cape Town. The Sunday Mirror, for which Wright works, deny this and say he was simply involved in a pursing a legitimate story.
Let us look at all of the theoretical scenarios here:
1. Wright works with Joseph for the fan to gain access to a secure area with the English team, a move which exposes a major security breach at the world cup. I can’t see how this is not legitimate journalism. South Africa promised the world their players would be secure and anything which exposes a flaw in that undertaking is legitimate journalism.
How many times have South African newspapers exposed prison security lapses/airport security failures etc using similar techniques. If one of our reporters was arrested we would be hopping up and down.
2. Wright had squirreled Joseph away to ensure his newspaper retained exclusivity. Is this “defeating the ends of justice” for which he has been charged? Maybe, but it is also a journalist protecting a source, something we in South Africa feel strongly about.
My view is that Wright is being pursued and prosecuted because his journalism has embarrassed our country and the national police commissioner who made a lot of noise about how ready SA was for securing the world cup.
No matter what we think of the British tabloids or their apparent agenda to trash South Africa, as journalists we should stand firm on our principles and leap to Wright’s side.
Even if I am a lone voice in this wilderness, I say Wright must be set free and the charges against him dropped. South Africa has a Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and I’m more proud of that than even the fact that we are hosting the world cup.
Readers who haven’t been living on Mars the last couple of weeks will have noticed an unusually patriotic tone to the Dispatch in our coverage, columns and commentary around the world cup.
This is entirely deliberate I must confess. I have been curious to see how readers respond to such an approach.
Does patriotism sell in South Africa? I think your response shows it does. It didn’t take genius to see that South Africa was about to experience a wonderful moment in the build-up to the opening game against Mexico last Friday.
The buzz (and vuvuzelas blasting outside my office window) inspired our front page of last Friday where, in a rare moment for the Dispatch, we led the paper with an editorial opinion.
There’s a lot of whining at the moment about our famous vuvuzelas and the din they make at soccer games. 
Famous players say they can’t hear themselves think, European audiences are whingeing that they can’t hear the “oohs and the ahhs” of the game, and international visitors say the stadiums sound like a swarm of angry wasps.
There are demands that the vuvuzela be given the red card and banned from stadiums. But we say: Hands off our vuvuzelas!
It was not hard to guess long before the World Cup started that the vuvuzela was going to be a key ingredient in this most African World Cup, along with dancing Archbishops and giant dung beetles rolling large soccer balls.
If the vuvuzela was to be banned, this tournament may as well be taking place in Reykjavik, Iceland, such will be the absence of African flavour. Banning the vuvuzela would be like banning Brits from vomiting and passing out in the gutter outside a footie match. Read the rest of this entry »
Any one reading the papers this morning would have had their theories of a broad media conspiracy confirmed. From the Dispatch, to the Sowetan, to Business Day, newspaper editors cleared their front pages to make space for editorials commenting on the importance of this World Cup day.
Well, I can promise readers that there wasn’t a secret midnight conference by editors of the country’s newspapers – we have all quite simply been swept up in the moment and the wonderful atmosphere which is sweeping across South Africa.
As I write this, outside on the streets of sleepy East London (a city with no official Fifa activities and whose city council has not managed to organise anything worth noting) the sounds of vuvuzelas blare, cars are honking and people are celebrating – and the games have yet to begin!
For those who didn’t see it, here is our front page of today. I figured that since our readers were removed from the heart of the action, the one way of connecting us all to it was through looking at the impact this event is having on our lives and attitudes as South Africans.
Below is the editorial opinion I wrote which was, unusually, also our front page lead.
_________
South Africa has long existed as a country, but South Africa as a nation is still being built.
A nation is more than a geographic delimitation on map; it is a curious consensus among all who live within those boundaries – and sometimes even outside them – that they share something in common, that they see in each other something of themselves – and that they are glad and proud to see this.
The nation of South Africa has yet to find its true form. During apartheid South Africa was not a nation despite what its architects may have argued.
Then 1994 brought hope that a new nation would be born but, as we have all realised, this is taking a little longer than we naively imagined.
At first we were enamoured with the idea of “a New South Africa” and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s “Rainbow Nation”, concepts which thrived and then withered as our cynicism and impatience took hold.
Our struggle for a South African identity is not unexpected. Other nations have taken centuries to find their voice so it is no surprise we have barely learned to talk.
Come June 11, 2010, we are beginning to understand that this South African nation, this big idea, will not only be built by statesmen and politicians.
Its evolution will not be the sole preserve of the Mandelas or the Mbekis or the Zumas. Mostly it will be built by us.
And this is why today is so important. We will burst with pride as the 2010 World Cup opening ceremony unfolds before us and we will weep with joy at Bafana Bafana’s trials and tribulations.
We will share something together and we will share it many times over the next month. And out of this experience we will come closer to understanding what our “nation” stands for.
South Africa as a nation will be slowly built on these shared experiences – and they will give us a shared history where once we had only disparate stories.
How many times in recent days have we heard people saying: It is just like 1995 with that Nelson Mandela moment at the Rugby World Cup final.
Right now we’re hungry for those moments because, in our hearts, we know that we want to reach higher than where we seem to be today.
We want to like being South Africans and we want to be proud too.
Today won’t be like 1995 – it will be new and it will be unique. In years to come this day will be a common reference in our shared, triumphant history as South Africans.
The curious consensus which defines a nation can be built on the oddest of things. It does not have to be built on wars and revolutions. It can be built on rugby matches and soccer games.
In short, today is about much more than a game.
Sometimes it pays to get a bit of perspective and there’s nothing like the woes of someone else to help you find it.
Yesterday a statement issued by the South African National Editors Forum had me thinking about how lucky we are to live in South Africa. The Sanef statement condemned the sentencing of campaigning Zambian editor Fred M’membe to four months of hard labour – on a contempt of court charge. His “crime”? To publish a critical commentary on the obscenity trial of his Zambia’s Post news editor after she e-mailed pictures of a woman giving birth on a street due to a strike by health workers.
Thankfully M’membe is now out on bail pending an appeal on his sentence and hopefully rational thought will return to the lunatic who thought hard labour was an appropriate sentence.
I can write that because I live in a real democracy, not Zambia’s pretend one. Read the rest of this entry »
We tried something new on our front page on Wednesday morning. Following Bafana coach Carlos Parreira’s announcement of the final team for the world cup, I decided to have lead the paper with an opinion piece about the selection, commissioned from our Johannesburg-based soccer correspondent Monwabisi Jimlongo.
I was happy with our (slightly jingoistic) piece and the way the whole thing knitted together. You can read the whole piece here. The brief to Monwabisi was to write for the the “Average Jane” on the street. I wanted a piece that explained the team selection to someone whose only interest in soccer would be now with the world cup around the corner and I also wanted a piece to pump those patriotic juices in our readers veins at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve had a couple of things bubbling away on the stove at the Dispatch for a while and this week they’re finally ready to be served.
First is the launch of Dispatch Civic which will bring the techniques of civic journalism to the heart of our reporting.
The central idea behind civic journalism is that the media can do more than simply yapping from the sidelines and that it can, and should, get involved in life. I agree with this.
As far as I know, the Dispatch will be the first newspaper in South Africa to make a formal investment in civic journalism and I am committing four reporters to the Dispatch Civic desk to ensure that it is a success. Read the rest of this entry »
This week has seen two very different responses to crime in South Africa. In Pretoria, crime victims and their families’ gathered to hand over a memorandum voicing their anger over this scourge only to be told by Brigadier Phuntsi Chipu that crime was not as great a problem as people thought.
“It is safe, crime is everywhere in the world. It’s no worse in South Africa,” Chipu said.
Clearly his message did not reach the ears of those behind the second response – a mob in Xhongora near Mthatha which killed and burnt two teenage boys they accused of robbing two elderly women of their pensions. Read the rest of this entry »
