Janet Smith
In your ear
I wanted to take a look around. Curiosity had nothing to do with it. Later John Perlman and I spoke about journalists’ need to see inside people’s spaces at interviews. A Tretchikoff can tell you as much about a person as a Tommy Motswai. I thought Perlman’s magnificent wine collection said quite a lot, as did his offer of a glass of wine, which is as rare an experience in this Coke-and-beer field as a piece of baklava in Marike de Klerk’s mouth.
Lured to become the new co-host of SAfm’s success story, AM Live, in place of John Maytham, who left to join Primedia’s Cape Talk late last year, Perlman resigned from The Sunday Independent on a relative high. Relative because Perlman was easily the newspaper’s finest writer, and because he left Sauer Street believing in the Indy’s future as a quality product.
Now the test for the writer and football commentator is to see whether he can hum on the airwaves with his sometimes intimidating critical faculty and understanding of irony. The test for The Sunday Independent is to see whether it can replace Perlman, who started his career at The Weekly Mail as a sports editor and discovered a taste for social drama when he offered to investigate the badlands of Hillbrow in the late 1980s.
Like so many journalists who have no desire to be in management, where the most exciting task of the day can be chairing a disciplinary hearing, Perlman hoped he could be a writer for his entire career. South African newspapers tend not to offer writers the salaries they deserve plus all the perks relished by the little grey men who reminisce about pens in the firing line and flak jackets in the boot. Newsrooms are now peopled by younger, inexperienced journalists who are less likely to commit to one publication. The loss, whether temporary or permanent, of Perlman to the print profession is yet another indictment of this state of affairs.
“There is an absence of trained and experienced journalists in print,” Perlman admits, “and on some papers it seems editors really fail to acknowledge that gap. Coupled with the problem of declining standards in writing, there’s also a tendency to compare print to radio and TV, which means some editors can’t inspire their journalists to write interesting things, to take stories further, anyway.”
Perlman doesn’t believe radio is the media’s salvation, but he’s excited about it. He say the team at AM Live has “got back to the core business. They work alarmingly hard, and I think they have to take huge credit because of being so lambasted from every corner. There was an amazing show of credibility against stiff opposition.”
AM Live’s ratings have been climbing steadily since the show went on air in 1994. “Radio seems to be getting on with the business of serving the public,” says Perlman, “and even if there’s been a sort of patronising response from other media professionals, something I think is quite dangerous, I believe this is a good show and I’m proud to be joining them.”
The interactive quality of talk radio delivers journalists on to the spot, and Perlman feels radio has transformed enough to be using fewer “experts and dignitaries” and more ordinary people to tell the story. “There’s a kind of respect that is given on radio to people who can voice our own confusions without being as dogmatic as politicians and commentators.”
I never did get to look around Perlman’s house, but he does have a charming purple front gate. A tad uncomfortable in spite of itself, but damn good-looking all the same.
AM Live is on every weekday morning at 6am on SAfm, at 104-107FM