Tribute magazine was launched in 1987 with the aim that it would become the lifestyle read of choice for the black middle class. The title sought to create a new image for black South Africans, opposing the limited and restricted images found in media at the time and honouring the “movers and shakers” who had succeeded despite apartheid.
“Tribute‘s philosophy at the time [of launch] was very simple: there was no virtue in poverty,” says founding editor Maud Motanyane. In an environment where successful black people were often ostracised and accused of aspiring to be white, Tribute provided a place where they could be admired. The magazine featured social pages, and, according to Mehlaleng Mosotho, former Tribute journalist, it would avoid “the troublesome clutter of things political.”
The formula appeared to work. At its height in 1997 Tribute sold a monthly average of 17,484 copies. But just three years later, in 2000, that had dwindled to 5,832 copies. The magazine closed when the company that owned it, Nothemba Media, was liquidated in June 2003.
How did a once successful and influential publication lose its way so badly? Former executives and journalists interviewed on this question could not agree on any one reason, and a number of different explanations emerged. However it was clear that the publication had difficulties long before it finally closed, and many of these had to do with ownership.
Tribute was initially launched out of the Enosi stable, which already owned two lifestyle magazines for affluent audiences: De Kat targeting Afrikaans speakers, and Living targeting the English speakers. By 1992 Enosi had gone into liquidation and Penta Publications had taken over. Penta went deep into the red in 1996, and a consortium including Independent Newspaper then bought the majority shareholding.
These changes in ownership had already impacted on the magazine. The original slogan, “Tribute to black excellence”, had become “It’s who you are” by 1997. In 1998 Pearl Mashabela took control of the Penta titles (as part of a black economic empowerment consortium) and in 2002 the magazine re-launched once more, changing the cover and using the slogan “Capture the moment”. Tribute also changed its target market, pursuing the wealthy within the 24 to 34 age bracket despite the segment’s relatively small size. The company that was finally liquidated in June 2003, Nothemba Media (under the Chillak group as majority shareholder), was so named because a bad credit record had tainted the Penta image.
That’s the short story. Former company executives cite a number of factors – some contradictory – in the longer story of Tribute‘s demise. Leon Janson, former advertising manager and now marketing director at the Azaguys advertising agency, says Tribute did not fold because of poor advertising but because the publishers owned too many unprofitable titles.
Mphoentle Mageza, one of Tribute‘s last editors, shares Janson’s sentiment. “It was the group structure. Even if Tribute was doing well it had to subsidise other titles in the stable.” Another former editor, S’bu Mngadi, points out that other magazines in the Penta stable drained resources from Tribute. “Tribute and De Kat were the only profitable titles,” he asserts.
Of course Tribute‘s lack of editorial standards didn’t help. Siza Seheri-Mthimkhulu, a former Tribute journalist, argues that “there was just no consistency in the editorial content of the magazine and there was no regularity with the reporting.” Seheri-Mthimkhulu remembers that some advertisers were not pleased with the typographical errors in the content, and that some ads were placed for free to create an impression that the magazine was doing well.
Then there was the issue of bad management. “Our late payment impacted on the staff’s creditworthiness. Late printing and poor planning were throwing everything off course. The environment was just not healthy,” says Seheri-Mthimkhulu.
Jenny Bradley, former Tribute advertising executive, corroborates that assessment. “The staff were often demotivated, because the company kept being taken over by new people all the time, and we worked without being paid at times.”
But Pearl Mashabela blames attitudes in the advertising industry, arguing that advertising agencies’ reliance on figures without due consideration for the product’s quality is one way of discriminating against black products like Tribute.
“In most cases [advertising agencies] look at black publications as a mass market. For instance, you can’t compare Tribute to Drum because although Tribute might be black it is aimed at a different LSM and class of people altogether. Yet we would be compared with Drum, Pace and True Love even though we were a highly niched magazine.”
Former editor Derric Thema takes a similar line, stating that white publications get preferential treatment. “There is a sort of reluctance by media houses to actually invest a whole lot of money into a black publication.” He says that Mafube, the black-owned publishers of Enterprise and Sawubona magazines, are doing well because “Mafube has been strategic enough to place white faces in critical positions.”
Founding editor Motanyane looks to broader macroeconomic factors. She asserts that the domination of the market by big media companies strangles smaller companies who are without their own printing and distribution resources. “Naspers, Independent and Caxton are in control in South Africa. It is important to see who controls the distribution and print production and where the magazines are placed at CNA.”
Maybe all the above conTributed to Tribute‘s collapse. Still, Mashabela implies that things could have been different. The former publisher says the history of financial problems at Penta over the years forced the take-over by the Chillak Group, an international investor who used Tribute magazine as collateral when borrowing money from Standard Bank. “So when liquidating Chillak the publication automatically had to go down – that is the real story behind the liquidation.”
Lebofsa Masha’s research was conducted under the auspices of the Wits Media Observatory at the Graduate School for the Humanities and Social Sciences, run by the Journalism and Media studies department.
Despite Government Funding?
At the time of Nothemba’s liquidation, Business Day reported that it had “information from a reliable source” indicating that the group was indebted to the tune of about R90-million, R40-million of which had been provided by government agencies.
Apart from about R12-million owed to Standard Bank, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) provided about R11-million, the Public Investment Commissioners (PIC) about R17-million and the SA Revenue Service about R12-million.
Former Financial Mail editor and Democratic Alliance MP Nigel Bruce was quoted by the Business Day on the PIC’s two investments: “The initial investment was a scandal and was followed up, knowing it was a bad investment. This was pensioners’ money, put into what was supposed to be a black empowerment venture, but which turned out not to be.”