In this first editor’s comment of this first issue, it’s probably appropriate to say a little something about the strapline. It comes from the name of the magazine’s publishing company Wag The Dog (PTY) Ltd. And that comes from the movie starring De Niro and Hoffman. The movie opens with the following: “Q: Why does a dog wag its tail? A: Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail was smarter, the tail would wag the dog.”
Of course, it’s a given that we’re writing for media junkies; and you’re onto us that movie is about ‘spin’. Yep, it is. But it’s also about the clout of the media, the cogs in the machine, the forces at work in the cutting room of culture, politics, society, the economy. Spin. Taking what these institutions give us, and spinning it out into the world.
So at Wag The Dog, we’ll be dealing with the enquiry on that level. We’ll be saying that the industry, the media, us we’re the dogs and the tail at the same time. We can’t be divorced from the institutions we serve. We cover and punt these institutions, we cover and punt society, culture, politics and yet we’re still, we inherently have to be, part thereof. We report on the captains of industry, we brand and strategise and tweak the messages of capitalism, and yet we live by the economy’s rules. And if we’re funded and excluded from the economy, we’re living by political rules. We’re the dogs and the tail at the same time, all of us; and no offence intended or taken, ‘cos the funny thing is that we like it. Nobody, besides us, wants to be a dog any more than they want to be the functionless, excitable appendage above itsanyway, you get the whiff.
The first issue is bitching. We have Denis Beckett wagging one-on-one with e.tv chief Marcel Golding. I have my day sniffing around and under the strategies of Trevor Ncube, new M&G boss, and Randall Abrahams, SABC’s GM of commercial radio. We have healthy howls and barks from what should become the core of the regular pack: Anton Harber, Tawana Kupe, Rudy Nadler-Nir, Tim Spira; industry analysts Horn and Koep; legal media beagles RWR; strategists and directors Herber, Bailey, and Christou. We have Mr-begging-for-a-canine-metaphor-but-aint-gonna-get-one Dave Bullard at the back.
We have bite.
Enjoy, Kevin Bloom