I seem to have spent the entire period between 2013 and last Monday without reading a single word about Pope Francis, who has just died.
I’ve been busy. In 2014 my editorship of Business Day ended. Then I was given a grand title and a column. Then I had to retire. I learnt to ride a motorbike and sold my last one when we left Joburg. Then it was Covid-19, and now we’ve just lost our ridgebacks and we’re building a new house.
Then the New York Times on my phone delivered the flash news that the Pope had died. I clicked on it and was quickly absorbed in a long and superbly crafted obituary, obviously updated over the years, carefully curated by a remarkable publication.
I was grateful for the read and sorry I hadn’t paid more attention. I’ve often thought newspapers should cover religion and its political and theological issues more seriously. Mainly though, I was grateful to the New York Times for doing its job, for taking journalism seriously, for checking its facts, for following up and for always correcting itself.
No matter how many times people who’ve never had to do anything hard like check an uncomfortable fact tell me “legacy media” like the New York Times is dead, I know for sure that’s rubbish.
I don’t believe a thing I read on X or Facebook until a “legacy” title like the New York Times or Financial Times, or indeed Business Day, tells me it’s true. X tells more lies than a toad. I use it, sure, but I check it. At least, in print, a correction like this newspaper ran on its front page last Thursday is stuck there for good. And it hurts to put it there in the first place, as it should.
Print and its associated digital drivers are simply more honourable. It’s the lineage, the traditions.
Print and its associated digital drivers are simply more honourable. It’s the lineage, the traditions. Any mistakes social media warriors make are left there to be “corrected” by those in the “community” who give a damn, and if none do then simply flick your thumb and the lie’s gone.
Not all print is worthy, obviously. Lots of newspapers lie for their governments or owners, but it’s hard — arguably impossible — for a commercial newspaper to lie and survive, let alone to work for a lying newspaper and hold on to your self-esteem. Social media thrives on distortion and alarmism.
I am mindful of all of this because Business Day, my “baby”, has changed its format, something I begged management at the company to do for years. I would have preferred a tabloid, but they’ve gone for a Berliner (a narrow broadsheet) and I think it looks just fine, apart from the fact that my column in this space is now much constricted.
The reduction in page size saves on newsprint but it also involves a larger wager — that readers are still available for a thoughtful and considered print journal. The businesses that advertise in Business Day, and the people who read it, are a special breed. We all need to understand just how difficult it is in these days of digital vassalage to keep a daily newspaper on its feet, and how valuable it is for the country. Business Day is one of just a handful of traditional business dailies left in the world.
That doesn’t mean we should not all demand more of it — more investigations, more specialist writers, more news, more pains, tighter writing, less space for politicians, better headlines. But we should also take more care of it. And when it lets you down a strong letter to the editor gets printed, not tossed away.
I know for a fact, from 50 years in newspapers, that no successful print reporter or editor ever loses sight of the simple fact that readers are the people here who matter most. This is your newspaper, it always has been. Make sure it gives you what you need.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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