ED’S LETTER

Journalism, as a profession, has faced many threats over the ages. When despots wanted the treasures they stole from the people and the skeletons they buried hidden, they threatened journalists, the guardians of said people. Today, there are a lot less despots, thankfully, but the threat to journalism remains. In the mad dash to break news, fake news has filtered in like a bad smell emanating from an unknown but festering fungi in the fridge. The digital revolution, instead of being the ally to journalism it was thought to become, has turned into an eye-gouging monster, intent on blowing anything and anyone that stands in its way out the water. Sadly, print journalism, the granddaddy and beacon of the profession, has stood there, with its noble hat firmly fixed, and took the punishment. Print is the victim of ageism, in much the same way people snarl at the elderly when they are holding up a queue at a public service spot or how motorist harangue them if they are fellow road users. To its credit, print has kept a cool, calm head, unflustered by the blizzard going on out there. You might be wondering what this has to do with a football magazine. Well, it has everything to do with it. KICK OFF magazine remains, along with many other credible print publications (that are sadly waning in number), the most credible source of soccer news this side of the equator. For 23 years (we are older than Percy Tau, Lorenzo Gordinho and Phakamani Mahlambi) we have brought it from the horse’s mouth. It was us that used to go to Lucas Radebe’s house and paint you his family picture or that brought you the growth of young Benni McCarthy, from prodigious street baller to South Africa’s first sporting superstar. We went where no one else dared. We swam with the fishes and drank with them, too. The advent of all social media paraphernalia – Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc – has meant that teams and players break their own “news”. The horse no longer speaks to print, it takes its hoofs, lifts a smart phone, points it at its mouth and “breaks news”. They add dog-ears and everything to their own Snapchats, but they can never replace proper news hounds. The risk here is, in as much as people have flooded to these platforms that give them unprecedented access to their favourite stars, what is news can be twisted to reflect whatever it is the role players and sponsors want you to see. News, by definition, is a concept that has been challenged and forced to defend itself in the face of newsroom scrutiny over its veracity until it finally breaks as a story. Unchallenged information scarcely counts as news. Unchallenged information is also dangerous, as the “fake news” syndrome has exposed. Yes, sometimes we get it wrong, but 90 percent of the time we get it right. What we’ve also gotten right is going to find the magazine stories that have somewhat been missing in the half decade since the proliferation of the click mentality. We’ve unshackled ourselves and gone back to what we know best: telling the best stories that have meaning for people. Like the story of Vincent Julius (pages 54 & 55), the first black man to play for a white football team. His move to Arcadia Shepherds this month 40 years ago led to non-racialised football – a huge damn deal in this country. Cricket, rugby and swimming never had a Vincent Julius and are still paying the consequences. So here’s a prediction: in five to ten years from now, when you can’t tell from your Facebook feed or Twitter timeline what’s true and what isn’t, we’ll still be here, by the news stall where you last left us. We won’t stop telling you about the greats of each era, like we’ve done in the Surprise Moriri feature (page 34) or chronicling the downfall of others, as in Naughty Mokoena’s case (page 40). Only true commitment to the cause of true and meaningful information can bring you what we’ve brought you in this month’s issue.