STOP PRESS

Guptas’ first editor on paper’s last edition

● Former president Jacob Zuma was as obvious as he was cogent. If his approach was incidental, he patently fooled me.

As my business partners and I were leaving Mahlamba Ndlopfu after a meeting about something else, he pulled me aside, casually telling me about some “investors” who wanted to enter the media space with very “progressive” projects. With my background and expertise, he thought I could partner with them. So, should he recommend me to them — even if it’s just to hear them out? “Of course, Mr President,” was my reply.

After a few encounters with Atul and Ajay Gupta and their adviser Essop Pahad over curry and expensive whisky at their Saxonwold home, and a brief introduction to Zuma’s son Duduzane at the family’s Midrand business quarters, it was left to me to name my price, and my short stint as founding editor of The New Age newspaper would soon begin.

A lot of things had already been taken care of, I was told. A reputable company had done some research and found that The New Age could easily take on the likes of The Star. And as soon as the daily was launched, we’d start work on the Sunday paper that would take on the Sunday Times and City Press, ostensibly to capture the lucrative jobs, tenders and property advertising sections.

The rhetoric behind our stated editorial stance was lofty: the newspaper would be constructively critical of the ruling party and its government, see the glass as half-full as opposed to half-empty. The malcontents were of course scathing about the paper’s ideological stance — including people like Moegsien Williams who, after telling his staff at The Star that the paper was bad for journalism, became its editor after losing the editorship of The Star. But then, such was the hypocrisy and scare-mongering among journalists at the time.

As soon as I got approval for certain key positions, I wasted no time in persuading some colleagues and friends, among the most capable journalists in the country, to join me. I had been given a month to recruit staff, another month to do mock-ups and dry runs (never mind the fact that most people had to serve notice), and there was an immovable launch date soon thereafter.

The clock was ticking. Compromises had to be reached. The company eventually agreed to pay market-related salaries for certain recruits, but I had to agree to a lean and mean team, most of whom had lots more responsibilities than you would get at any other newspaper. I was also restricted to one correspondent per province, for a paper that said it was to be South Africa’s first truly national newspaper, each weekday devoting a full page to each of the nine provinces.

On Thursday September 23 2010 we published a teaser we had done over two days, to give South Africa a sense of what we were about. A fairly decent effort, but one that fell way short of our expectations, and we missed all deadlines.

The IT systems were catastrophic, a situation not helped by communication breakdowns between staff and the indentured technicians and engineers brought from India.

It was then that we discovered that we had been fed lies, and corners were being cut. With things not adding up, they awoke the journalists in us.

We discovered that printers and distributors knew nothing of a premium our proprietors had supposedly paid for late deadlines and a timeous delivery of newspapers to all corners of the country. We were forced to work with an uncompetitive 5pm deadline for writing, and the knock-on effect was that not a single day went with us able to publish a full newspaper, or a product we were proud of. And the next day, when we checked ourselves against our competitors, we looked more like a highschool rag than a national quality daily.

So, on October 19 — media freedom day — I resigned along with my deputy Karima Brown, opinion and analysis editor Vukani Mde, news editor Amy Musgrave and culture editor Damon Boyd.

The closure of a newspaper is not something any journalist should celebrate — whatever one’s thoughts about the publication and its incarnation.

The truth is that while it lasted, The New Age created jobs, and provided many opportunities to many people.

While newspapers the world over are going through a lot these days, I think I’m able to say, with all humility but with authority, that no one should be fooled: The New Age’s proprietors never really intended to create a proper newspaper, or jobs.