/ 19 February 2007

Glossies: Where are the black writers?

Ferial Haffajee says the lack of transformation in our magazine industry makes her resistant to purchase.

I feasted over the festive season. In addition to my usual diet of Shape and Real Simple magazines, I gorged on O, the Oprah Magazine, Femina, Elle, Woman & Home and others. I snacked on other magazines on the shelves even though they didn’t find a way into my trolley.

As a child growing up, my mother always bought Fair Lady and ever since I’ve had a love affair with magazines. The feel of gloss on the fingers, the latest trends, the monthly dose of inspiration or pop-psychology had me in its thrall before I was 10.

But in the past few years, as I’ve feasted, something has threatened my appetite. While newspapers blew with the winds of change in the Nineties, the magazines have felt nary a breeze.

It was President Nelson Mandela who started the ball rolling when he remarked that South African media had not transformed in step with the country.

A whole country rather than just a slice is captured by cameras and pens. Effective transformation means that new realities find themselves reflected in our national mirrors; that new sources of information and opinion are found so that our media does not stick to its old and comfortable networks.

Ultimately, this is good politics and good sense. Under the glare, first of Mandela, then the black editors’ forum and later the Human Rights Commission, newspapers changed.

But magazines have failed to change. Just look at the credits column to see. Magazine editors have, in the main but with notable exception, failed to break their comfortable networks of journalists, columnists and freelancers. It is a largely white world. They are there because they are often, but not always, excellent; they probably file on time and to specification. But they are also buddies, old networks, friends of friends and daughters of colleagues.

It is how business has always been done.

So what, you may ask? The very same magazines boast in advertisements that they have an equal number of black readers as they do white, so what’s the beef. They are clearly penetrating new markets.

But consider that black readers like me want to see our lives reflected in magazines, want to see black bylines, read alternative opinions and peer into different worlds. As an editor, I want to read all the young and upcoming talent, not just young white writers. Because I am in the industry, I also know that there is no shortage of entry-level energy and talent. Yes, poaching is a real threat.

But it doesn’t always mean busting the bank to keep your black talent. If they feel as if they are stakeholders and have as much as a stake as those in the old girls club do, then they will stay.

As a reader who does not get her magazines free or on subscription discounts, it’s with some authority that I say this lack of transformation will make me resistant to purchase.

As an informed South African and African, I would like my magazines to feel more home-brewed than they do. O, the Oprah Magazine, under the editorship of Kgomotso Matsunyane shows how it’s done. She’s created the ultimate crossover magazine and regularly brings in bright new talents.

There appears to be a view that because magazines are leisure reads and don’t operate in the cut and thrust, politically sensitive world of current affairs, there is no need to change.

But there is and it is for those of us who happily pay up ever escalating cover prices for a monthly fix.

Ferial Haffajee is the editor of the weekly Mail & Guardian and the chairperson of the South African National Editors Forum.