Garikai Tunhira

It’S time for the morning diary, and the first thing we do as the editorial team in charge of content and design, is to carry out a postmortem of the day’s paper before discussing stories that could make it into tomorrow’s paper.

being the chief sub-editor, I would have run my eyes through it earlier, sniffing out mistakes for a product that’s already on the streets and cannot be recalled.

on some days, we have the best designs in town, with everyone talking about them. on other days, it’s not the same story. but everyday, we strive to produce the best product.

It’s not easy coming up with a sexy design which you believe will sell the paper, while rushing to meet the deadline.

there is nothing as difficult as beating deadlines, especially when much of the production happens on your desk and you have to rally all your teams, worse with your bosses breathing down your neck that you are slowing the process.

but it’s a newspaper; it can’t be rushed, neither can it be slowed down. the editorial board is always checking for those slight mishaps and correcting you daily. Your editors forward those emails to you and you have to share with colleagues.

the editors say everything is slipping on your desk. At times you check and for sure, either you or your colleagues on the desk slackened a bit during the process. or somewhere up there, that’s where something twitched.

It’s a daily paper, and so it has its pressures. there is a lot of reading involved throughout the process. You correct someone today, they bring another story with the same mistake you corrected yesterday, the day before, last week, or even two hours earlier.

Sub-editing requires a lot of reading, going through designs by other newspapers in the region or even international, learning a new design or two each day.

Sub-editing is about reading and cleaning stories and giving life to a page. Imagine reading a grey page, with all text and no picture or graphics.

I have been NewsDay chief subeditor since November 1, 2017. before that, it was Yvonne Gasura, who is now news editor. And before her, there were three others — ropafadzo mapimhidze, Kamurai mudzingwa and reward magadhi, that’s the chronological order since the birth of the paper.

I have experienced the pressures, been shouted at, with the bosses pounding the desks, at times I have had paper trail (printed pages pinned together throughout the editing process) thrown on the floor, and received nasty emails for a job done in “shoddy” manner.

I have come to understand why at times that is done. our stories are our currency. If we give our readers kak, our readership dwindles and it has a ripple effect on our print run, our advertising, salaries, staffing, etc.

When NewsDay came alive on June 7, 2010, I wanted to join. but back then, I was a stringer at HMetro, of which my (verbal) contract was to run out at the end of that month.

month-end came and I went to Number 1 Kwame Nkrumah Avenue, where NewsDay used to be, left my Cv with the receptionist. No positive response came.

but almost two years later, on April 1, 2012, I finally joined the organisation. Now it was very much established. Joining as a junior sub-editor, I saw many come and go. I have been here for eight of the 10 years since the paper hit the streets.

What does the future hold?

Like all the other industries the world over affected by the CovID-19 pandemic, the media has not been spared. the pandemic has seen companies shutting down or asking employees to work remotely.

management here had to take a bold decision, asking employees to work from home. only skeletal staff was coming after the national lockdown came into effect on march 30.

Since many people were now home and not getting into town or going to the nearby shops to buy newspapers, we went digital on April 1.

NewsDay and its sister papers

Zimbabwe Independent and

The Standard — were now being offered on email and mobile phones. the world is going digital. but there are questions that need answers — Will the hard copy survive in a digital era? Will the sales remain high in the future? Will the ordinary person afford to buy internet bundles so they can browse the newspaper? How many people like reading the paper on their mobile phone or computer screens?

mind you, we have plenty analogous characters in a digital era, people who believe the old system of reading the paper is the way to go.

besides all that, how safe is the mainstream media considering the emergence of digital media and social media platforms, where unverified news articles are quickly shared and they circulate to thousands of people in an instant?

Will sub-editing survive in the digital era, where stories can move from a reporter, to a line editor, then proof reader, to editor before being uploaded onto websites — skipping the sub-editors?

but for now, we are still there, thanks to high internet charges in the country, a turbulent economy, and obviously, you, our analogous readers. You are the ones keeping our jobs safe, well for now.

today is done, tomorrow is another day, but let us strive to make our yesterday define our tomorrow.

Happy 10th anniversary NewsDay. Congrats, makorokoto, amhlophe!