Retired former Citizen editor MA ”Johnny” Johnson died in his sleep at his Highlands North home in Johannesburg early on Wednesday morning.
Johnson edited The Citizen newspaper from shortly after its first publication in September 1976 until his retirement five years ago. He would have celebrated his eightieth birthday in March.
Johnson’s wife, Cecily, told Sapa that her husband died at around 4.30am. He was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus last year.
”I feel terrible, this is very shocking. I am heartbroken,” she said.
A founder member and current picture editor of The Citizen, Wessel Oosthuizen, said: ”Although he was often difficult to work with, he was the best newspaperman this country ever produced.”
Ken Owen, a retired editor of the Sunday Times newspaper, said Johnson was technically an enormously competent editor but had some ”very strange” political convictions.
”He was a very skilled editor and the existence of the Citizen owes everything to him… but he was a strange man who had some strange habits.”
Johnson was educated at Athlone High School and the Witwatersrand Technical College. He attended night classes to matriculate because he worked during the day.
He began his newspaper career at the Daily Express in Johannesburg becoming the chief court reporter in the same year. He worked on the Sunday Express and the Rand Daily Mail as a reporter, and became a sub-editor at the Mail at the age of 19.
Johnson joined The Star daily newspaper as a sub-editor in 1951 and was promoted to deputy news editor. In 1959 he became the assistant editor and news editor of the Sunday Times weekly newspaper and at age 38 was appointed editor of the Sunday Express.
He edited the Express for 13 years from 1961 to 1974, helping to make it the second biggest English Sunday newspaper in South Africa at the time with a circulation of about 200 000.
Johnson resigned from the Sunday Express in 1974 and after a brief spell at running his own public relations company, replaced the first editor of The Citizen in 1976 — a fortnight after the paper was launched. Shortly after taking over the reins he changed The Citizen’s format from broadsheet to tabloid.
He edited the paper for 21-and-a-half-years helping it to become one of South Africa’s most popular morning newspapers.
In 1953 Johnson was awarded the Imperial Relations Trust Bursary to study life and conditions in Britain for a year and in 1956 Johnson served as the president of the SA Society of Journalists. In 1991 he was awarded the Republic of China’s international communication award.
Johnson leaves three daughters, who live in Australia, five grandchildren and his wife Cecily. He will be buried at the Jewish section of the Westpark Cemetery in Montgomery Park on Friday. – Sapa