There’s widespread support for fired Sunday Times editor Mathatha Tsedu, yet some consideration should also go to Connie Molusi, the Johncom CEO who did the deed.
Molusi sung Tsedu’s praises last year when he hired him as the first African editor of the paper.
”Mathatha Tsedu is one of South Africa’s most respected and accomplished journalists,” said Molusi. There was, added the CEO, no doubt about ”his inspired leadership”.
It would have been with distress and disappointment therefore that Molusi, himself a former activist and official in the South African Union of Journalists, last week announced ”irreconcilable differences between the company and Mr Tsedu”.
So deep was the rift that no settlement could be agreed upon, leaving Molusi with the last resort of issuing immediate marching orders.
It would have been doubly difficult for the Johncom CEO, coming on the heels of his firing of another prominent African journalist last month. Then it was Elle magazine editor, Cynthia Vongai, who plagiarised copy and planted the seeds for a cover-up.
A caller to Metro FM this week berated Johnnic management for being ”coconuts” — blacks behaving like whites. Yet no matter how much Molusi may be criticised for Tsedu’s termination (which is not as clear-cut as Vongai’s), he is definitely no Uncle Tom. He acted — perhaps overreacted — to a complex of factors in which things were much more complicated than simple black-white identity.
There have been claims that Tsedu was a victim of racism, and that more firings of African staff at the Sunday Times are to come. But it is hardly credible that Molusi or black-owned Johncom would pursue that kind of purge.
It is true that some senior Sunday Times staff (of white, coloured and Indian backgrounds) turned against Tsedu. Not because of simple racial scripts, but because they disagreed with particularities of his vision and disliked his style and pace. Also counting against him was his status as an outsider in a tightly knit newsroom with strong internal apprenticeship traditions.
The internal rebellion came as a surprise, because, as leader of the South African National Editors Forum, Tsedu had not only held together a range of egos and political cultures, he also shifted them in a more unified direction. Sadly, this record was not to be repeated at the Sunday Times. Staff resistance there was probably the decisive reason for his ousting.
Sadly too, sectors of society also rejected aspects of Tsedu’s editorship. With roots deep in the black consciousness era, he had been impatient to change the Sunday Times. Ironically, at the abrupt end of his editorship, not many major changes could be detected in the paper.
Excepting the ”Indian” ethnic wrap-around that had become more non-racial in content, the main body of the publication was not fundamentally different. Yet, even the positive changes that Tsedu wrought seem to have contributed to circulation loss. Sales, especially of the ”Indian” edition, declined. Combine this with difficulties in the newspaper advertising market, toss in the staff dissidence, and it is clear how his position became insecure.
These factors, and a deteriorating personal relationship, prompted Molusi to drastic action. No one can envy the Johncom CEO in having to swallow his earlier words and hopes, and declare the failure of the project. In effect, he was admitting to a setback for media transformation.
In hindsight, Johncom management should probably have foreseen the challenges. Everyone knew that Tsedu had stood for a different, blacker and more Africa-oriented paper. It was a new journalism he wanted, yet one for which finally he was unable to win sufficient backers among sectors of the staff and readers.
With foresight, Johncom should arguably have stuck with Tsedu, right through the uncertain transition and its attendant difficulties. For them, the question of a different newspaper persists despite his departure.
The classic recipe of serving politics, breasts and bums to largely racially based audiences (and underplaying the rest of Africa) may make business sense for now. Yet it begs the question of the potential of South Africa’s biggest paper to not merely follow the markets, but also to lead and shape them.
The paper’s tested — and tired — old formula fails to nudge readers beyond community race consciousness or to nurture a greater interest in the continent. In the long run, it is also out of kilter with history.
Meanwhile, the abiding lesson is just how difficult the jobs of editors are.
There was a time when editors (largely white) reported to a company board, rather than a publisher or even a CEO. Back then, an editor could concentrate on matters editorial, rather than business. Schmoozing advertisers was something done by a different department.
Editors in that period had few worries about bridging diverse communities, particularly in a context of transition. In the newsrooms, they ruled supreme.
All that has changed today. So overturned have things become that one editor at least, City Press’s Vusi Mona — who belatedly resigned this week — evidentally saw nothing wrong with even combining public relations and journalism during his tenure.
A new model of editorship desperately needs to be constructed. If Tsedu is in part a casualty of confusion around the current model, the same can happen to any of his peers.
That cannot be good for business, and it is time for owners and managers to revisit their expectations of those they choose to lead editorial content in these times of transformation.
Many people will identify with the predicaments of both Tsedu and Molusi. But spare a thought for the next editor of the Sunday Times. And for what kind of paper he or she will bring us.
Guy Berger is head of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University and deputy chair of the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef). He was recently nominated for the World Technology Awards.