Getting through a month of enforced abstinence from one’s favourite addiction, alcoholic or otherwise, is not easy.
In my case, I’ve just spent four weeks in Addis Ababa, mainly teaching a course at the university, during which time I was forced to do without my daily dose of South African media, and specifically without my weekly Mail & Guardian.
Occasionally, I made attempts to access the M&G and other news websites on a dodgy and uncertain Internet connection. But my main news diet consisted of BBC World (its abiding obsession with the Middle East left little space for anything else) and the tiny local English-language newspapers (understandably dominated by the gathering storm in Somalia and domestic politics).
There were just two South African stories that I recall seeing during this time: the bloody shootout between police and criminals in Johannesburg that left 12 people dead in late June, and the search for Nelson Mandela’s gun at Lilliesleaf farm.
Returning last week, I thought I would turn the period of news famine into an opportunity. I would look at the M&G with fresh eyes — reading it like a civilian, as New York Times editor Daniel Okrent once put it. I thought I would pretend I was new to the paper.
It was not really possible, since my familiarity with its style and approach is too deeply ingrained. I quickly found myself looking for favourites, avoiding some sections, dwelling on others.
But still, some things struck me.
For one thing, it was useless to try to ”catch up” on the news by reading the M&G. There was no way of divining what the big stories of the month had been. It seems to have been a quiet month, when there were few obviously major stories, and the M&G‘s news choices had very little to do with what was covered elsewhere. That became clear when I skimmed through the stack of other papers that had accumulated next to my desk.
The M&G is far from a paper of record. It makes no attempt to represent everything of importance. That’s not a bad thing at all, it just means that it goes its own way. The notion of being a paper of record is in retreat anyway: even the New York Times, which apparently invented the term, no longer wants to be known as one.
Instead, the paper offers an opinionated, individualistic take on politics, particularly those of the ruling party, as well as investigations into skulduggery of various kinds, the environment, some education, a fair amount of coverage of the SABC and Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, and a particular interest in the Middle East.
There’s a strong cultural bias, in the broad sense: in these weeks, the situation of transgendered people was investigated, and there was a fascinating spread about shifting identities in the new South Africa. And that’s in addition to the freshly redesigned Friday section, covering everything from Orthodox reggae to circuses and literary prizes.
The paper is at its best when it tackles an important story in detail. There were several spreads of this kind over the month, offering various combinations of original reportage, analysis and commentary: a package on the African National Congress’s ”charm offensive”, one on the judges’ Bills, a drier one on the Chinese roadshow through Africa, and one on the war in Lebanon.
I found myself drawn to several quirky stories: alien sex, the expedition of radio presenter Patricia Glyn following the footsteps of an ancestor, although last week’s full page on a haircut and the champion hairdresser who gave it seemed very generous.
It’s a very cerebral paper. Look at the front page: heads, heads, heads, mostly of men in suits. Last week’s account of two families caught in the Lebanon fighting was a rarity. It was great to find a more descriptive account of the human reality of this terrible conflict.
Paging through the month’s papers, I found an old irritation at its Russian doll structure reawakened. One gets to the editorials in good order, and then a series of sections within sections get in the way: the start of the business pages, followed by the start of a supplement on Mpumalanga, one on public-private partnerships, then Friday, and then the back halves of those sections in reverse order, until you finally get back to the paper’s main section with the Zapiro cartoon.
Many readers, I am sure, simply take out the whole batch of insertions and put them aside.
The four weeks of M&Gs haven’t given me much of a sense of what South Africa has been talking about. But they have provided lots of interest nevertheless.
The Mail & Guardian’s ombud provides an independent view of the paper’s journalism. If you have any complaints you would like addressed, you can contact me at [email protected]. You can also phone the paper on (011) 250 7300 and leave a message.