The Sunday broadsheet market is hotting up, with both Naspers’s Media24 and Independent Newspapers making aggressive plays for more market share. Media24  now has Ferial Haffajee, the highly regarded former Mail & Guardian editor, at the helm of City Press – and the paper is moving upmarket – while there is a definite change in the wind at Independent Newspapers. Not only does the Sunday Independent have a fulltime editor and deputy editor for the first time in many years but the company has also invested in a group investigative unit and an in-house training unit for young journalists. Last week I spoke to Haffajee and Makhudu Sefara, who took over as Sunday Independent editor five months ago. Here is an edited transcript of the interview with Haffajee:

Click here to read the Q&A with Makhudu Sefara.

Click here to go to my Moneyweb column, which this week is about the battle of the Sunday broadsheets.

GILL MOODIE: When you took over at City Press, everyone assumed because of your background at the Mail & Guardian and Financial Mail that you’d been hired to take the paper upmarket and move into the Sunday Times’s space. But is this in fact the case?

Ferial Haffajee

FERIAL HAFFAJEE: My brief from the board is very clear. They want to reposition City Press while retaining that which the readers like. So we want to move it up the market; not right into the Financial Mail/Mail & Guardian space at all – but to play in about LSM (Living Standards Measure) 7-10. At the moment we’re spread into LSM 5 and up to 10.

QUESTION: But that is into the Sunday Times’s territory, isn’t it?
ANSWER: Yes, I guess so. Together with Rapport (the Afrikaans Sunday broadsheet owned by Media24) it’s quite a clear strategy  to be competitive but you’ve got to see the two working together.

QUESTION: What fascinates me as you have a hugely challenging task that, if you pull off, will be quite a thing. Can you reposition and retain the 200 000 sales that you already have. I would imagine many of the readers are quite conservative and identify with City Press’s distinct Africanist identity very strongly. At a certain point, won’t you have to kiss some of them goodbye?
ANSWER: I think that is the brief as well: knowing that we are going to lose some readers. I’d like to not lose too many of them because in various readership surveys, there’s a real love relationship between its readers and City Press. In that way, it’s the same as the M&G… something that you carry with pride and you identify with very, very closely.
But I do recognise that in pulling the paper along to where my brief needs it to be, we are going to lose some readers.

QUESTION: The Sunday Times (which is owned by Avusa) did that under Mike Robertson when it said goodbye to some white readers and it was a great success as it gained many readers in the black middle and upper-income groups. You can’t please everybody.
ANSWER: It’s a nerve-wracking thing to do. You know, no editor wants to lose readers but that’s my very clear brief. It’s not too different from the M&G because my brief from (M&G publisher) Trevor Ncube  was that he wanted it to be a far more a South African/African paper. He wanted it to be  far less owned by only the white-liberal group of readers and bring in many more black readers, which he were  successful in doing by the time I left.

QUESTION: You started at City Press in July but the ABC (circulation) figures for the last quarter of last year are delayed. The City Press was at 183 985 sales in Q3 of 2009 compared to 198 727 in Q3 2008. Practically everybody had a decline in circulation last year but where would you guys like to be in a year’s time?
ANSWER: I’d like it to be at 200 000. We have done dipstick surveys and I’ve been watching the numbers very carefully. We were hit very hard by the recession. Our surveys  did ask the question on whether the changes in content did impact on buying patterns and they showed up only in a positive way. Some readers did express concern that we were maybe packing into much of the gossipy Khanyi Mbau stuff, which they didn’t like — but which I think it’s an essential part of a Sunday read so I’ve got to look at that quite carefully.
The biggest  thing has been that our Careers section got much smaller and that’s a key reason for buying. That for me, would help to understand why we have had this dip in the recession: Careers getting smaller plus, like with all papers, many more people sharing copies (of the paper.)

QUESTION: Under (previous City Press editor) Mthatha Tsedu, the paper was very heavy – it was politics, politics, politics. It does seem to me that you’re mixing it up more and bringing in new elements.
ANSWER: And also trying to change how we write stories,… to write much tighter and offer readers more options – almost like a sushi board – so that they can dip in and dip out and the really committed ones read your entire package.

QUESTION: Every new editor stamps their mark on a title and makes new appointments? Have you made any?
ANSWER: Other than a creative editor, I’ve not made major appointments. I moved quite carefully and used the first months to assess the strengths of the staff I found there.  It’s a very senior, talented, fun group of people to work with and, like I said to them yesterday: ‘It’s been nine months now; if I had a list of people I wanted to bring with me, I would have done so by now’.
But I do also have 15 vacancies and while I’m not going to fill all them, I do want to fill the key ones and I’ll start doing that now in the new financial year.

QUESTION: City Press was part of the voluntary retrenchment process offered by Media24 earlier this year. Did you lose any people?
ANSWER: Not at all. Because we had this large number of vacancies, I was coming in well within budget. It was a completely voluntary exercise and none of my people applied for it.

QUESTION: What would you say has been the biggest challenge since you took over at City Press?
ANSWER: Like I say I found a nice team — very friendly. Trying to shift the paper while retaining readers has been very hard and then I think that editing through a recession is incredibly tough for any editor. You’ve got frozen posts while trying to retain and grow circulation… But at the moment we’re at quite an exciting place. We’ve got this amazing designer and I think the paper is going to look very beautiful.

QUESTION: I was going to ask you about that because the typography in particular is so dated – it’s so 80s.
ANSWER: Well, now we’re going to take it right into the Noughties.

QUESTION: It  does seem to me that the first things you wanted to do was build your team, get the content mix right and a redesign comes later. When will see the new look?
ANSWER: I’ve had to bed down my team, work out a strategy, define a content path  that’s going to be unique to us and get buy-in for us. The designer started working with us in December and we’re taking it quite slow so later this year we will introduce the changes: lots more  colour, a completely new typography – quite a modern, 21st century look. I really like it.

QUESTION: You mentioned defining a new content path. Can you tell me more about that?
ANSWER: My philosophy is that news must lead and unlike the US or Europe, we’re not yet (in SA) in a place where newspapers are only a place for analysis or explanation because the public broadcaster is still quite weak and TV and radio tends to follow print.
So I’m news driven and am trying to instil in our team that every page has to have a significant news break,… to be quite agenda setting and at the same time that every page has something pleasurable or funny or beautiful to read or look at because that’s the nature of  Sunday. I don’t always succeed in that, I must admit, but that’s the philosophy.

QUESTION: As we’re talking about setting the news agenda, do you think the Sunday Times has left the door open on this to you guys and the Sunday Independent as they no longer consistently set the national news agenda?
ANSWER: Look, I think (Sunday Times editor) Mondli (Makhanya) has found his  mojo this year. They’ve had significant breaks one after the other. But I think that none of us should assume that (becuase) the Sunday Times is going to do it,  we can settle into comfortable analysis. I think we’ve got to go right in  there and fight for the news. That’s why I’m quite excited about Investigations24 (the new Media24 investigative unit led by Jacques Pauw). They’re beginning to break the big stuff like Schabir Shaik. That was very good for us and they’ve got quite a few more up their sleeve.
Generally at City Press we’re putting it on a very strong news footing. I have  really good news editor.

QUESTION: It seems to me that the Sunday broadsheet market is getting really competitive, with you at City Press and Makhudu Sefara now at the Sunday Independent.
ANSWER: Yes, look, Makhudu  was our big news breaker at City Press. (Sefara was political editor at City Press when he left to take up the Sunday Independent’s editorship five months ago.) I was very sad to lose him as he’s really well connected and he can pull a lead out of a hat on a Saturday afternoon.
I  think (the competition is) excellent. I think if newspapers get into high competitive mode, we’ll ensure our longevity for maybe five to 10 more years.

QUESTION: Is there anything you wish to add?
ANSWER: I want to go back a little to the task of moving along a very established reader. I’d like to think that we (in South Africa) are not as racially boxed as some marketers and the media industry would have us be. For me, it’s finding that cross-over appeal. I look globally at how figures like Obama or Oprah have transcended race but still be quite black in their identities – and I look locally for examples and try understand what is it that appeal that speaks to all sides of the spectrum. I  was one of the few people in our newsroom who fought to keep (the City Press slogan) “Distinctly African”.

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