I wasn’t the only person who hoped Trevor Ncube was overstating his case. But a day after his controversial speech to editors last week, he was still publicly affirming the seriousness of what he had said. Here’s what he said, and here’s why he is wrong.
”Being in business is about defending the bottom line,” declared the Mail & Guardian proprietor and CEO. ”Journalists incorrectly assume we are not a business, that papers are somehow different to sweets and Coca-Cola.”
This journalistic heresy was voiced by the up-and-coming media magnate at a seminar convened by the South African National Editors’ Forum and Multichoice in Johannesburg. He unrepentantly underlined it the next day at the Nat Nakasa Journalism Award ceremony in Midrand.
”We,” said the former editor, including his journalists in the royal pronoun, ”cannot be in business and not behave like business people.”
The traditional ”Chinese wall” between editorial and advertising has to go, he avowed, because each side needs to understand each other and have a ”healthy relationship”.
Ncube complained that his journalists only approach him to ask for higher pay or more staff positions, instead of coming along with ideas to make money.
”People think it is unethical for a journalist to talk in these terms. That’s old-school thinking,” he stated.
He went on: ”You cannot avoid cutting costs if you are defending the bottom line.” Journalists need to do more with less.
I can see where Ncube is coming from — he has had to turn around the loss-making M&G and his priority has been monetary issues. To his credit, the paper now seems more secure. But this achievement does not mean that his rhetoric is right, nor his recipe appropriate for the medium term.
Speaking at the same seminar, Mzimkulu Malunga — who is the managing director of Business Day and the Financial Mail — showed that one can make money without risking any compromise of editorial quality.
”We are running a business, not a charity,” he stated. But he differed from Ncube in respect of the ”Chinese wall” issue. He said it is valuable to have a creative tension between editorial and advertising, arguing that ”editors need to be protected from bloodhounds like ourselves”.
The two top-level media managers were speaking in partial response to criticisms raised by another speaker, Joel Netshitenzhe, who is the CEO of the Government Communications and Information Service.
”There is a threat to media freedom,” said Netshitenzhe, but this threat does not emanate from the government. Instead, there are ”insidious encroachments on media freedom happening before our very eyes” — all resulting from ”the surging power of the bottom line”.
Netshitenzhe described this development as ”ubiquitous, as it spreads its tentacles into the newsroom and the editorial office — as it imposes itself on the mind of the practitioners. What editors and their staff think and how they should express it is subject to that deity, the bottom line.”
This fiscal fixation does not result in media content relevant to the social conditions and genuine interests of the majority, he argued. Instead, the media business has become ”a lifeless transmission belt of the base instincts of consumerism” and the pursuit of moneyed audiences.
”Editors,” said Netshitenzhe, ”are co-opted into the number-crunching of short-term commercial imperatives.”
The marketers and advertising agencies are ending up determining editorial.
”In the ethics of the bottom line, marketers and advertisers become the kings of content,” he concluded.
This negative assessment of the impact of commercialisation was rejected by Ncube and Malunga. Content is king, they argued, because it sells publications and it needs to be invested in. Ncube argued that business principles not only work to promote quality content, but that ”without a healthy bottom line, the independence that we clamour about stands threatened”.
For him, making money protects media freedom.
”You are more empowered to do public good if your bottom line is healthy. I am more comfortable with private capitalism than philanthropists or governments underwriting the media business.”
What Ncube did not spell out is his definition of a healthy bottom line, nor did he give his view on a ”healthy” apportionment of profits between him and his staffers. Also missing was an appreciation about different possibilities and motivations within commercial ownership, about the different possible ways of ”being in business” and securing economic independence in the marketplace.
Most conspicuously absent in his remarks was reference to the way modern corporate governance regards the bottom line. In fact, most contemporary businesses today talk about a ”triple bottom line” — putting their profit performance alongside complementary accounts of how they have fared on environmental and social registers.
They recognise that good corporate citizenship — and good business — in the 21st century has moved a long way from an exclusive focus on the financials.
One could go further in the case of the media as a special sector. A strong case can be made for the industry to develop a fourth bottom line — that is, reporting to stakeholders on how seriously its content has constituted a quality contribution to society.
The importance of this benchmark lies in the unique nature of the media industry in terms of its significance for culture, democracy and development. The businesses of ”sweets and Coca-Cola” are not about ideas, rights, edification, enlightenment or cultural growth. Journalism is.
In the distant days of the South African Associated Newspapers, veteran editor Raymond Louw told the seminar that the company mission used to be ”to produce a public service at a profit”.
It is the reverse emphasis to Ncube’s formulation. The key distinction is between his stress on publishing in order to make money and the alternative vision of making money in order to publish. It is about means and ends, and whether tails wag dogs.
One way to avoid fudging the difference is to have a quadruple-bottom-line accounting system for the commercial media. Surely, a newspaper company that reports quality results with regard to all four criteria would be a better investment prospect than those with just one, or even three, benchmarks?
Here’s a challenge, then, to Ncube: why not take the lead in popularising an extra bottom line for the media industry? Right now, your business achievements on the M&G and the paper’s current editorial quality would yield you impressive results.
But if your vision remains solely on the money, that grand watchdog of a paper will decline and evolve into just another cash cow. That may make you personal pots of money, but isn’t there more to being in media than this?
E-mail Guy Berger directly if you have a question about this article.
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.