Ferial Haffajee speaks to Fred Khumalo, the editor of a new weekend newspaper which is set to roll off the presses in March
The editor of Sunday World, Fred Khumalo, is the epitome of his new reader: black, stylish, discerning and upwardly mobile. He struts through the empty offices of his new empire, kitted out in a royal blue blazer and a matching tie.
The 32-year-old editor talks on his cellphone, nodding to the journalists with first day jitters who will power the cutting-edge product he is planning.
New Africa Publications (owner of The Sowetan) and Times Media Limited defied the largely stagnant newspaper market to launch the new title, which will roll off the presses on March 7. Sunday World will be a broadsheet with a tabloid heart.
Khumalo has been busy since his appointment late last year. In addition to doing the advertising agency rounds and introducing his new product to a difficult industry, he has been poaching some of journalism’s finest talents to create a newspaper which, despite its empty offices, already exudes a sense of black ownership and control.
Khumalo is a new generation of editor. In his own words: “Lots of people think you have to be 50 or 60 to be an editor.” He is also black in an industry where editors’ ranks have only recently begun to change colour. But probe him and the retort comes fast: “I see myself as an editor and the paper not as a black paper, but as a paper!”
Sunday World is targeting an initial circulation of 100 000 newspapers in a market where its competitors will be The Sunday Independent, the Sunday Times and City Press. The South African newspaper reading public is shrinking, although not as fast as it was earlier this decade.
Research found that 700 000 Sowetan readers do not buy a Sunday paper. A Sociomonitor survey suggests that these non-weekend readers believe the City Press lacks credibility and that they ask of The Sunday Independent: “What is that?” In a sense, then, Sunday World will be competing with its sister newspaper, the Sunday Times, where sales of the Metro (read black) edition is growing.
Mondli Makhanya (formerly The Star’s news editor) will serve as the new paper’s associate editor, Heather Robertson (formerly Elle’s deputy editor) is features editor and Sandile Memela (formerly City Press arts editor) will edit a 20-page arts supplement called Phola, which means cool or chill-out.
When he qualified as a journalist from the Natal Technikon in the 1980s, Khumalo and a group of colleagues started the Concorde news agency, which later formed the nucleus of the independent newspaper New African. Fiercely political, the publication folded under too much political coverage and few of the entertaining nuggets which keep readers buying regularly.
But the times and the journalist have mellowed. The bespectacled Khumalo most recently worked as the editor of the Sunday Times Magazine where he dabbled in journalism that was purely entertaining.
Paging through his newspaper will be “like the experience of watching television”. Design will be a big feature of the Sunday World and every page will be broken up with fact files and biographical boxes.
It is a type of newspaper growing popular around the world, but when the now defunct Sunday Star tried it some years ago readers didn’t go for this “turning up the volume” on their weekend read. That newspaper was awash with small stories and lots of graphics and boxes.
Can it work here and now? “The Sunday Star was way ahead of its time,” says Khumalo, adding that the Argus company, which owned the paper, was too ambitious in its targets.
The Sunday Star also steered clear of politics, something the new read will not do. Instead, this will be a political paper with a mission to be both investigative and opinion-making.
Says Makhanya: “It will move black newspapering into the mainstream. Black newspapers are perceived to be peripheral. It will be a product that will rise above other black products.
“I don’t think people are disinterested in politics. But our political coverage is very statement and speech-driven. Nobody says what these [statements and speeches] mean.”
It appears that the heart of this newspaper will still be contested. Will it be a serious read or a tabloid where pretty girls and titillating tales are its abiding features?
Khumalo, Makhanya and the rest of the team have less than two months to get the new paper on to the streets.
Like all new editors, Khumalo claims great advertising agency support with bookings from Rembrandt and Old Mutual.
“We don’t believe that just because we’re black people will come flocking. It’s the cynical 1990s and people are not gullible,” says Khumalo, who will be as involved with marketing the paper as he is with planning news coverage. “Whether it’s soccer, shebeens or jazz, we’ll be there.”