S.A. paper grows from wild start to fame

Press, 22 September 1977, Page 6

S.A. paper grows from wild start to fame

By ERIC MARSDEN of “The Times” (through NZPA) ( Johannesburg Few of the world’s great ‘ newspapers were launched , with such panache as the “Rand Daily Mail,” which ( yesterday celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary. Its first editor was Edgar ’ Wallace, whose fertile brain . also conceived “King Kong”. ’ His reign lasted one hectic j year, in which he won the , paper world renown, and , brought it to the brink of financial collapse. j Sixty years later the paper won a different and , more lasting tame. Before the “Mail” was ; born, gold-mad Johannesburg, was a boom town served i. since 1887 by the “Diggers’! : News” and Witwatersrand [ “Advertiser” which was able', to establish itself first partly [ because of the printing plants for its intended rival fell j from an overturned oxwaggon into the Vaal River. I'

It was backed by friends of Kruger but ran into trouble at the turn of the century and soon folded. Perturbed traders and settlers met in Heath’s Hotel, Johannesburg, to discuss how to fill the vacuum. 1 Emmanuel Mendelssohn was more worried than most because he had been left with a stock of idle Linotype machines and other equipment. Freeman Cohen made him an offer and the first moves had been made towards starting a new journal. Soon after this a young man with a huge cigarette holder strolled into the hotel and greeted Mendelssohn. ! Cohen asked who he was and was told, “That’s Edgar 'Wallace. Kitchener can’t stand him. He’s the man who scooped everyone over the 'peace negotiations for the! 'London ‘Daily Mail’.”. i (Wallace had beaten alb i his rivals with a cable dis!closing that the Bereeniging!

Treaty ending the Boer War had been signed. When it reached London all the editorial and printing staff were locked up for the night to prevent the news leaking). Impressed, Cohen took his second fateful decision, engaging Wallace at a prodigious salary to start his paper. The first issue was on September 22, 1902. Wallace, alas, turned out to be every newspaper manager’s idea of the improvident newshound. Regardless of cost, he hired a special train to race rival newspapers to Pretoria every night, a fleet of vans for local deliveries, and had correspondents in all the world’s capitals. Then the bills started coming in for long cables at 10s 3d (about 90c) a word from Tokyo and 6s 2d 1 (about 55c) from Buenos Aires. To pay for these, the high wages and the extravagant circulation system, ' Cohen drained his personal

bank account and had toborrow heavily. Wallace was paid off, the! train was shunted into a! siding, and the vans dis-! persed. Cohen died a year later. I The Afrikaner Republicans' tried to buy the paper but] friends of Lord Milner per-| suaded Abe Bailey to beat' their bid. The “Rand DailyMail,” financially secure, settled down to become for some decades a superior but not exceptional journal.

It won its greatest prestige in the 1960 s under the editorship of Laurence Gandar. After he had published a series of articles by Benjamin Pogrund exposing alleged prison malpractices, both were charged with contravening the Prisons Act forbidding such disclosures. They were charged in January, 1958, but their trial a cause celebre, did not end until July of the next year. It was preceded by trials of Mr Pogrund’s informants. Mr Gandar was fined 200

rand (about $205) and Mr I Pogrund given a suspended [jail sentence.

i Their ordeal drew attention to the perils of running a newspaper in South (Africa, which has been likened to “walking blindfold ■ through a minefield.” I In 1966 the “Rand Daily !Mail” won the World Press Award of the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association, which praised its pursuit of truth, freedom, and justice and noted that this had meant “opposition to authority with danger to its own survival.”

With the minimum of compromise, the paper has kept going. Under Mr Alister Sparks the new editor, the Gandar tradition of exposing social ills and Governmental excesses has continued. Faced with censorship during the Angolan war in 1975 it incurred official wrath by leaving blank spaces.

This year it was reported to the Press Council for

publishing a booklet by the Christian Institute t cataloguing allegations of police torture. Its reply was that it was a newspaper with a basic function to publish statements and opinions of] others without necessarily' accepting that they were correct or subscribing to them. A decision is awaited. The “Mail” is also selfcritical. It runs a column inviting readers to correct errors they have noted and has an ombudsman who, if necessary, censures his reporting or sub-editorial colleagues. One complaint was against! a woman columnist whb light-heartedly referred to 1 “Old Betty Windsor”, the! ombudsman sagaciously re-j 'plied that while South! Africans owe no fealty or 'formal deference to the 'Queen, "old habits of mind are not easily expunged” and on grounds of good

manners alone readers would deprecate such an uncivil tone to “a lady who does an extremely difficult job jolly well.”

From its inception the “Mail” has claimed to be champion of the underdogs. The Christmas fund for | the poor and needy, started Iby Wallace in 1902, for most [of the time catered largely 'for the poor whites. These days it is devoted mainly to [the hungry black children in 'the crowded urban areas. I In the last decade there has been a dramatic change in readership, which is now estimated to be 60 per cent non-white though sales to blacks and Coloureds are ionly 28 per cent of the total. 1 The ABC circulation 'figures for the first six 1 months of this year averaged 144,000 daily, with a i peak of 164,000 in June. The estimated daily readership is 950,000 as the I Paper passes from hand to hand, especially in the black townships.