Star editor Richard Steyn was dismissed in what was an early shot of a new newspaper war. By Weekly Mail Reporters
ATHOUGH there has been a furore centred on the ”resignation” of The Star editor-in-chief Richard Steyn, he was in fact fired.
Sources close to Argus management say that Steyn was summoned by Argus Newspapers chief executive John Featherstone two weeks ago and told that, because of restructuring, there would no longer be a position of editor-in-chief. He was told he could apply for the position of The Star editor, but was unlikely to get it.
What followed was 10 days of negotiations over his departure package, including an agreement over what would be said publicly. The two parties agreed to make short, separate statements, and then remain silent.
Steyn chose to say that he had resigned over a matter of principle, the appointment of a regional managing director to whom the The Star editor would have to answer. He felt this was an intrusion on editorial independence, since The Star editor had always answered only to the board of directors.
Featherstone said that Steyn had chosen to leave and had declined to accept any new appointment after a disagreement with management.
Steyn’s dismissal was the culmination of a protracted battle of wits, personality and style, including disagreement over the appointment of the new regional managing director, former Pretoria News editor Deon du Plessis. In the end, one senior staffer said, it was a ”cold and brutal act” of dismissal of ”an innately decent and honourable person”.
Staff were deeply shocked at the ”brutality” of the company’s treatment of Steyn.
However, by raising a moral issue as the reason for his departure, Steyn managed to cause a furore over his allegations that management was intruding on editorial independence at Argus Newspapers.
His dismissal was an early shot fired in a major war breaking out between the major English-language newspaper groups.
Argus Newspapers, long thought of as fuddy-duddy and complacent in its domination of the daily market, is leading its troops into war. Argus management is under pressure from its new owners, Irishman Tony O’Reilly’s Independent Newspapers, to raise profits considerably.
To do so, a number of plans are being hatched, including refocussing most Argus newspapers and re-forming their management and editorial structures. The other major English-language newspaper group, Times Media Limited, is gearing up to counter the challenge.
A key part of the plan is the launch of a national business insert in Argus papers around the country. Former Playboy editor Jeremy Gordin has been hired as managing editor of the new publication. An editor is still being recruited.
This is a major threat to TML’s long-standing domination of the business market through Business Day, which is currently unchallenged in its daily niche, Financial Mail and Business Times (in the Sunday Times).
Cash-rich TML, whose recent balance sheets have reported huge surpluses of cash on call, is spending money and making strategic plans to counter the threat. ”We’re taking the gloves off,” one senior editorial staffer said. ”We are getting ready for a real fight, and there will be blood on the floor when we have finished.”
The battle is made more serious by the plans of the Swedish newspaper group, Dagaens Industri, to launch a business newspaper next year as a joint venture with Johannesburg- based Enterprise magazine. Says Dagaens Industri’s Christer Pettersson, the company already has five similar ventures in the Baltic states with the newest in Lithuania about to start up.
There is also talk of the London Financial Times launching a South African venture. Another significant player in the business publications market, Finance Week, is involved in a court battle over control of shares, with the current controlling shareholders hoping that the publication Euromoney would buy them out.
”It’s a dramatically exciting market,” exclaims O’Reilly’s appointee as Argus Group editorial director, Ivan Fallon, newly arrived in South Africa. ”There are vacuums in this market, and I am surprised that they have not been seized upon before.”
Fallon is also eyeing TML’s domination of the Sunday market through the Sunday Times, the country’s largest-circulation newspaper.
Fallon says its only competition (presumably he is only looking at the ”white” market) is the Sunday Tribune in Natal and to a lesser extent the Weekend Argus in Cape Town. That will change after the morning and afternoon papers have been revamped and sorted out, he says.
”If we don’t fill this gap, somebody else will,” he says.
If he does so, he will be taking on the most pugilistic of South African editors, the redoubtable Ken Owen of the Sunday Times, who has fought, won and lost more newspaper wars than any other editor in this country and bears a grudge for the Argus company’s destruction of the first newspaper he edited, the Sunday Express. With a massively successful company, and TML’s cash resources at hand, he will not take the threat lightly.
Both groups have also been eyeing the lower end of the daily market — mass-market tabloids. TML has been involved in protracted negotiations with New Nation for a buy-out with a view to using it as a platform to launch into this market.
This would have a major effect on The Sowetan, half-owned and managed by Argus, and the Citizen, owned by Afrikaans group Perskor.
O’Reilly also said, shortly after his investment in Argus, that he believes there is a gap in the market for a new mass-market tabloid.