Chapter One – From strength to vulnerability

Chapter Fifteen: An Argus editor at the Mercury

Though much of the control of the Mercury moved out of Robinson hands with the Natal Newspapers merger in 1986, the reign of the Robinsons finally ended in a blur – theoretically either with the sale of Robinson shares to TML in 1990 or with the expiry of the five-year period for editorial control to remain with Robinson, which had been agreed with Argus in the Natal Newspapers merger. But it was a moment of little consequence to Robinson.

Robinson technically had been given the right to appoint the editor for five years after the merger – part of the plan devised to soothe Competition Board concerns over an Argus monopoly, but Jimmy McMillan had remained unchanged as editor through almost the entire five-year period, Robinson not choosing to interfere with an editor in whom it had confidence.

When McMillan decided in September 1990 to step down the following year, Robinson made no attempt to appoint the next editor, but TML – who had bought Robinson’s shares in Natal Newspapers – briefly sought to contest the right to appoint the next editor in the face of an Argus assumption that it would do so. TML claimed to have inherited the right with the shares it bought from Robinson. Argus disputed this, as the five-year period was just running out. It was an argument that Argus won. Was this also a dispute resolved behind the scenes by Anglo bosses through JCI?

McMillan made it clear in an interview with me that the running-out of the five-year period of Robinson editorial control had not been a factor in his decision to retire. “I had been editor nearly 20 years, and I had just had a bad smash-up in my back, with the result that I was looking at life and saying: ‘Do I just crank on for another three years?’ And, looking at the position of the Mercury, which was not making profits, I felt it was time to get out and have some new blood in the place.”

Another factor that had played heavily on his mind in deciding to retire was the windfall benefit staffers had gained from leaving the Mercury Pension Fund a few years before, at the time of the Natal Newspapers merger, where there had been a proportional pay-out of the actuarial reserve (on Athol Campbell’s insistence) to Mercury members leaving the fund.

The consequence of that arrangement was that “there had been pretty big pay-outs, so much so that I actually doubled my salary when I retired.” It was a factor McMillan bore in mind once he had decided he had had enough and was ready to retire.

Questions I put to other Argus executives confirm that there was no pressure put on McMillan to retire when he did. It was a decision he took himself.

Another factor could well have been that he had other work in prospect. McMillan had hinted to his colleagues that he had been promised a senior job in government by President F.W.de Klerk, whom he had known well for years. Talk was that it was going to be a diplomatic post or possibly a position as information attache at an embassy, and that McMillan had set much store by this.

In the event, nothing was forthcoming immediately after McMillan retired, and when he was eventually offered a position, it must have been a disappointment to him. He was offered a position on a commission of inquiry into whether secret projects of the government should be made public. The commission’s work lasted only a few months and was hardly what McMillan had led people to believe he was going to be offered. Perhaps, with political developments moving apace, it had become impossible for de Klerk to honour his word in this respect, and he had been left with offering McMillan a mere morsel.

I well remember the circumstances in which I was offered the editorship of the Mercury in succession to McMillan. It came at a point in my career when I was beginning to think I had been passed over.

Some years earlier, in the mid-1980s after the demise of the Rand Daily Mail, RDM editor Rex Gibson had been offered the deputy-editorship of The Star under his great friend Harvey Tyson on the retirement of John Pitts. This intrusion of a TML executive into the top ranks of Argus editorial had come as a hammer blow to ambitious journalists within Argus, who then realised management was prepared to look past its most senior editorial staff to fill top positions.

I was myself not in a position at the time to be a contender for the deputy-editorship of The Star, being at the time deputy-editor of the Pretoria News. But other editorial staff in the company more senior than I were cut up at the decision, which had the effect of stopping any promotional ripple that could have occurred from Pitts’s retirement.

The same wave of disillusionment swept senior Argus editorial ranks when, as Tyson approached retirement in 1990, the company chose Richard Steyn (editor of The Natal Witness) from outside the group to succeed him, thus even passing over Rex Gibson and leaving several aspiring senior journalists in the group, including myself, with no apparent future.

I came to have a high regard for Steyn as a person and as an organiser of people, though I was not happy with his decision to move me from the position of managing editor to that of political editor of The Star, a virtual demotion. He also wanted to put his personal stamp on The Star by making his own appointments, one of whom was Shaun Johnson (then of Weekly Mail) whom he wanted to promote rapidly to seniority.

All this had led me to believe my chance of further promotion in the company was over, and I was seriously considering leaving to find other work (I even applied unsuccessfully for Steyn’s vacated editorship at The Natal Witness) when the Mercury editorship came up. In the week or so after the announcement of McMillan’s impending retirement before the company showed its hand, I had quietly thought to myself that the Mercury editorship was virtually my last chance.

On September 13 1990, I was in an editorial planning meeting when I received a message that Peter McLean wished to see me. I felt then, even before I reached his door, that this could be my moment.

It was, in fact, a somewhat confusing moment, because McLean said he had been asked by Argus Newspapers chairman Doug Band to offer me an editorship, but he was not sure whether it would be the editorship of the Mercury or of the Pretoria News. He said he expected it to be the Mercury, because Mossie van Schoor, editor of the Pretoria News, had been chosen to succeed Michael Green at the Daily News 18 months down the line, and it would not look good to appoint him to the Mercury and then move him so soon afterwards.

McLean said Band had given me two days in which to think through the offer, and that I should see Band at 9am on the Friday, when a firm offer of one editorship or the other would be made to me. For myself, I could have accepted immediately, because I knew that if I did not accept the editorship offered, I was unlikely to get another chance. As I was already 53 years old, I was at the upper edge for being appointed for the first time to an editorship in the company.

But I knew I would have a problem at home, and I did indeed. My wife had developed a strong antipathy to transfers, as the family had been moved so often in the past – during my parliamentary reporting years every six months, but on several other occasions also. Each time she had struggled to put down roots, only to have to pull them up again.

When I mentioned to her the offer of the Mercury editorship and that I was thinking of accepting it, she burst into tears and would not speak to me for two days. I was thus left to make the decision on my own.

I decided to accept the post on the basis that it was too good to turn down and that I had always found transfers something of an education for all the family. It got us out of any ruts. And the job was challenging as well as gaining me a crowning recognition after many years’ hard work. I had aimed to get to the top. I could not turn it down now that it was offered to me. My family background played on my mind also. My grandfather on my mother’s side had been an editor – G.H.Wilson of the Cape Times – and my father Jack Patten had edited The Star. I had the chance to continue a grand tradition.

My interview with Doug Band, where I was finally offered the editorship of the Mercury, was short and pleasant. He had been in his post only a few months and had not come up the newspaper route to the top of the company, so I had never had the chance to meet him before. I found him relaxed and relaxing.

He made it clear I would have all the authority of an editor and the support of the company, provided I took a reasonable line and did not allow power to go to my head or take to drink or any other damaging addiction.

Band went to the trouble of reassuring me about my appointment, saying there had been strong talk in the company – especially among some accountants – of closing the Mercury, because it was losing money. My appointment, however, meant the company had made a firm commitment to keep the Mercury alive. My appointment would be from April 1991, so I would have plenty of time (a full six months) to make my arrangements.

From Band, I went to McLean, who summarised the position of the Mercury for me as being a paper with solid readership support, but having difficulty in a market in which the Daily News was the market leader. The Mercury had maintained a circulation roughly 30 000 copies a day fewer than the Daily News, but that in recent times that gap had been widening. He hoped I would act rapidly to inject a feeling of new life into the paper to close the gap to 30 000 again. The paper had been under one editor for a long time, so needed a breath of fresh air. It also had several members of staff close to, or even over, retirement age, so it would be useful if a new broom could sweep clean.

The announcement of my appointment was made a few days later and, after the congratulations had subsided, Steyn came to me and said that, now I was leaving, he would appreciate it if Icould relinquish my responsibilities by the end of the year (December 1990) so he could proceed with appointments he wished to make at The Star. I explained that this would be awkward, because my Mercury appointment was only from April 1991. Not long after that, however, I was informed that my appointment had been brought forward to February 1991, because Jimmy McMillan felt, with so many new political developments, that it would make sense for me to take over as the new parliamentary session began, rather than land in a situation in which the Mercury had already taken a line I might not agree with on certain policies soon to be announced.

This made sense to me, and also enabled me to tell Steyn I would be able to leave The Star by the end of December, so helping him with his needs while enabling me to get the family moved to Durban and settled before the start of the new school year.

My appointment came at a time when great political change was already under way, and I had to consider how the Mercury would fit into the changing scene where a full South African democracy was virtually around the corner.

First, I sounded out various people on what the Mercury was like and what was needed for the market it served. These enquiries yielded some clear perceptions. The Mercury had been run mainly for white readers and advertisers as its market. It had an established readership with many older readers, a base that was conservative to the core. The paper was regarded as sympathetic to Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party and opposed to the ANC. It was not the market leader in the general daily newspaper market, but had the advantage as a morning newspaper of more distribution time to the country areas than the Daily News. It also generally got first breaking reports on business news. There was, however, not much business advertising to boost the number of pages of business coverage, because most of the business advertising was released in Johannesburg.

There appeared to be a distinct gap in the English-language market for a newspaper serving black readers. Although Sowetan was sold in Durban, it did not have a special Natal edition and was short on Natal news.

I spoke to Richard Steyn about the Mercury from his experience of having the Mercury as his competition in Natal. He advised me to forget about trying to compete with The Natal Witness in Pietermaritzburg, because the Witness had that scene wrapped up. The Mercury’s best opportunities were in Durban and on the North and South Coasts.

I lunched with John Featherstone, who confirmed Steyn’s view that there were few prospects of expansion in Pietermaritzburg.

And I consulted Jos Kuper, head of the company’s Market and Media Research division, with whom I had worked well in the past and in whose judgement I had great faith, who stressed that morning readers had only 20 minutes to read the paper, so that news had to be presented to suit that need. Reports should be short and sharp, and the front page was the most important area for display. The more stories the paper could contain on the front page, the better. She suggested the paper could throw its weight behind the ANC, because that was the way the country was going, but I preferred an independent position. Uncomfortable with the ANC’s flirtation with socialist and communist policies, and with its terror and boycott tactics during the liberation struggle, I preferred a liberal stance more in keeping with my own views. Nevertheless I agreed with her that I needed to extricate the Mercury from its conservative image and political positioning and to make the paper a relevant bridge into co-operative inter-racial policies.

Though the National Party was trying hard to reform itself, I regarded it as seriously tainted by its past, its only remaining asset being President de Klerk in his role promoting transition. I was closest in political philosophy to the Democratic Party, but by no means wedded to all its policies. I had good friends in the party in other parts of the country, but no close links with the party in Natal. I felt it suitable to keep it that way.

Because I was to become the next Mercury editor, I was invited to attend the Natal Newspapers annual strategic planning session, held that year over three days in the Drakensberg. I was at first impressed by proceedings, but soon came to realise Natal Newspapers was riven by groups with hidden agendas. Several people had come to the conference with little intention of doing any work, and the main behind-the-scenes activity was pressurising non-conformists into accepting the agendas of the power group. The following year when I was at the helm of the Mercury, I came to realise that the conference decisions seemed to have been forgotten as soon as the conference was over.

Asked to say a few words at the conference, I mentioned jocularly that I was amazed how many editors the Mercury was going to have, because everyone seemed to be telling the editor what he must do. Though I did not say so there, this was very far from my understanding of the role of editor in the Argus Company. Editors in my experience had as their task to set agendas and policies, and were expected to lead new initiatives in the company while managements ran the commercial and administration side of the business. There had been a minimum of influence across the gap between these two streams on other papers I had worked on, but the pressures were very much against this at Natal Newspapers.