The Media magazine every year recognises the top 10 women in the South African media who have made a significant contribution to the industry. This year Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee has been included in this select group.
Gender equality is becoming a key focus of governmental and corporate activity in South Africa. President Thabo Mbeki has highlighted the matter in a number of state speeches, and big business seems to be following suit.
In the media industry, an increasing number of women are assuming leadership roles at media-agency and media-owner board level, in newsrooms and in government and public-sector organisations, as well as in corporate sales and marketing departments.
Kevin Bloom, editor of The Media, said South Africa is certainly not short of female flair.
”There’s a broad range of local female expertise across the demographic spectrum — all diverse and remarkable women, each of whom has made a major contribution to the economic, political, social or cultural development of the local media industry.”
The final list for 2004 was drawn from nominations submitted by readers, by The Media’s editorial board, and by the top 10 women listed in The Media‘s 2003 women’s issue.
Here are the winners:
Ferial Haffajee, editor of the M&G. When Haffajee took over as editor of the M&G in February this year, it had been mere weeks since senior Sunday Times reporter Bongiwe Mlangeni had asked the following in an article in The Media: ”Will the day come when a woman will be editor of a popular newspaper like The Star, M&G, City Press or even Johncom’s cash cow, the Sunday Times?”
Trevor Ncube, owner of the M&G, said: ”The first black woman editor is a milestone, but it was not about being politically correct — she has the intellect, passion and focus to take the newspaper forward.”
Charlene Deacon, the managing director of Kaya FM. Deacon has been credited with turning the station into the fifth largest in the country after it posted losses of R4,5-million in 2001.
Ann Donald, editor of Fair Lady magazine. Donald named editor of the year in 2003 by Admag. Fair Lady also posted a 45% increase in quarterly circulation in 2003 and is currently the fifth-largest women’s magazine in the country.
Sunday Times columnist Gwen Gill. Gill been described as ”the most powerful and influential journalist in South Africa”, according to Business Day‘s Anton Harber. Adding a new word to the South African media lexicon -‒ ”schlebs” — she defines, for readers and the media, the essence and exploits of South African ”high society”. If you have an event, and Gwen is not there to write about it, did you really have an event?
Head of the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) radio news Pippa Green. Green’s career biography reads like a dream: Fulbright Award (1987); South African National Editor’s Forum founder member (1996); Nieman Fellow (1998); editor at Financial Mail, Sunday Independent, Pretoria News; worked for The Nation, Les Tempes Modernes, BBC, CBS, ABC; head of SABC radio news since 2002 and has the job of informing 15-million people in 13 languages daily.
As Green says: ”Our challenge, not only for the SABC but for the South African journalistic community, is to make radio news credible, to make it interesting, to bring the world to our furthest rural corners and to bring the rural corners of South Africa to the centres of power here.”
Research executive Beatrice Kubheka. Kubheka has been a research executive for nearly 30 years and has blazed the way for black, female market researchers. In 1977 she was invited to join Bates Advertising and by 1989 she had been promoted to research director and holding board director. From 1999 to 2002 Kubheka was managing director of Marketing and Media Research, the research arm of Independent Newspapers.
She was instrumental in the launch of the Zulu tabloid Isolezwe, now the best-selling daily newspaper in KwaZulu-Natal. She launched African Response June 2003, one of South Africa’s first black-owned and -managed black economic empowerment research companies.
SABC public broadcasting managing director Judi Nwokedi. As the managing director of public broadcasting (PBS) at the SABC, Nwokedi commands the largest radio listening audience in the country. Nwokedi joined the SABC in 2002, after four years conceptualising and implementing loveLife, South Africa’s largest Aids-awareness campaign. Her leadership strategy at the broadcaster over the past two years has focused on the rejuvenation of PBS radio to redress a long period of historical inequality and non-investment in resources.
Television investigative journalist Debora Patta. Patta describes her defining moments as a journalist as: ”covering [the] 1994 elections and following [Nelson] Mandela on his election campaign; being around to cover the third elections 10 years later”.
Media by Storm founder Erna Storm. Storm started Media by Storm with R7 000 and a stake in a horse called Catch 22, which won enough money for her to capitalise the start-up phase of the freelance media consultancy. That was in 1993.
By 1999, as Tony Koenderman wrote in Adfocus, the agency ”took over the media operation of Young & Rubicam, nearly doubling its billings in the process to R300-million a year and lifting its rank among media buying agencies from 15th to fifth.”
Rising Star Award: Unathi Nkayi. Quoted in Time magazine, Yfm DJ and pop diva Unathi Nkayi has had a charmed and diverse life for a 25-year-old. After graduating from Rhodes University’s journalism department, she came to Johannesburg in 2001 to ”catch a break” and landed a job as presenter of the hit Castle Loud television show.
From there she moved to Yfm radio and was ultimately rewarded with a drive-time show, Kamikaze Heat, alongside Rudeboy Paul. Rudeboy and Unathi have a unique talent for getting anonymous callers to discuss their darkest secrets and fears on air, and the result is a revelation of this country’s emerging cultural zeitgeist. The chemistry between the two allows them to engage with HIV/Aids sufferers and kwaito king Mzekezeke with equal ease.