Mail & Guardian reporter
Senior executives of The Saturday Star and The Sunday Independent were this week informed of plans to collapse their newspapers under the editorial control of The Star.
Executives were shown paper plans of the new arrangements which are part of the profitable Independent Newspapers group’s plans to retrench staff and dramatically cut costs. The new plans slash editorial executives from 15 to six across three newspapers.
Each title will have a separate editor, but in the long term a super-editor could be appointed to hold sway over the three titles.
The Saturday Star is likely to be taken over by Mathatha Tsedu, who will replace Nazeem Howa, appointed general manager of the Gauteng operation. Sub- editors and some sports writers are likely to lose their jobs in the rationalisation exercise which is part of a plan to create a seven-day continuous operation.
Executives and staff have not been told who the six editorial executives will be or whether they will remain the existing executives at The Star, some of whom have years less experience than those at the weekend papers. Nor have editorial executives at the weekend newspapers been told what their fate will be.
The two weekend newspapers are already running on shoestring staff and budgets. Staff are concerned that they may be in line for retrenchment although management – who said the plans were still under discussion and not finalised – said that it would not automatically mean staff would lose their jobs.
There has already been resistance to the plans with fears that, as one senior staff member said, “the dregs of news that is left out of the daily paper will be shunted forward to the weekend papers and quality and standards will plummet”.