This will lift your spirits: the big number is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Popularity: 5% [?]

.. Look to the heavens. hold your hands up and chant “Serenity Now” – A montage from the classic “Serenity Now” Seinfeld episode.

Popularity: 10% [?]

This is a little after the fact, but I thought it might be useful to do a visual comparison of Jacob Zuma’s 2010 State of the Nation speech compared to his inaugural speech in 2009 following his election as president.
The differences are easy to see visually. Big emphasis on Madiba (mentioned 10 times) and no surprises there since Nelson Mandela was wheeled out to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his release from prison (also to help rub off some charm and credibility on our embattled Prez too, no doubt).
In a sign of the times there was more emphasis on jobs (mentioned 8 times) compared to four the last time round. Also “labour” gets  a good look in with five mentions compared to one in 2009. Kissing some butt on the left, no doubt.
“Improve” and “increase” are big keywords this time too with multiple mentions which, I suppose, plays to the overall theme of the speech about getting government moving.
It’s interesting what has been left out of the speech. No mention of “morality” or “values” which is a bit ironic considering that Zuma has now created a platform for this in the last couple of weeks following new revelations of yet another affair and love child. Makes you wonder how sincere he is about this “national dialogue” if he didn’t think to refer to these themes in his State of the Nation speech.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Not only is this classic George Castanza rant from Seinfeld a laugh but I bet you wish sometimes that you could lose it with your boss like this.

Popularity: 3% [?]

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 transcripts of the interview with Sefara:

Click here to go to the interview with Ferial Haffajee.

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

QUESTION: The Sunday Independent has been the poor step-sister at Independent Newspapers for some time. What did you find when you walked in the door as editor? (Previously Sefara was at City Press and Independent Newspapers.)

Makhudu Sefara

ANSWER: There weren’t many people. The paper had survived on group contributions (from other Independent newspapers and from cross-title units such as the political desk) but we’ve tried to turn things around and propel the paper in a different direction. We are now joined by Mpumelelo Mkhabela from the Sunday Times as the deputy editor and we’ll be getting other new people very soon. We’re putting out the ads… There are great plans to pay much more attention to the title.
The past five months have been quite gruelling… but we’ve seen the numbers increasing. In September last year, our total sales were about 31 000 and going down. We’ve now managed to stop that decline and not only that but to get 4000 new readers since then and the graph is pointing upwards.
I think that’s what it makes it worthwhile… it’s not that this is difficult but it requires quite a lot of time that you don’t always have to deal with the many things that require your attention.
But you see the response that we have received, and you can stop and say: ‘Ja, it’s really worth the fight. Let’s keep on going back there and trying to improve and change things here and there and look at what we don’t provide and how we can accommodate it in the title, where we can get the resources to provide new items’ … Of course, it’s a constant struggle, to look at what works and what doesn’t work, what must be retained and what must be thrown out the window. And if you’re throwing it out, how many readers are going out with it. If you’re introducing something new, to how many people is this going to be relevant. It’s a constant to and fro.
But so far it’s looking good and we’re hoping to maintain the momentum… towards the end of the year, we should be chasing 40 000 to 45 000 (sales).

QUESTION: When the Sunday Independent was started, The Sunday Times had a very clear proposition in that it was the agenda setter of the country and you went to the Independent for the extra stuff – the analysis and the good international copy. Are you guys sticking with this traditional Sunday Independent role when the Sunday Times is no longer consistently setting the news agenda?
ANSWER: I don’t think we need to surrender the battle to set the agenda to the Sunday Times – and to others. What I think we should do is to use whatever resources we can muster on the front page to set our agenda. If you look at the stories we did, for instance, Nathi Mthethwa’s deal and the hotel in Durban, those stories have set the agenda. I’ve gone on a number of radio stations and those stories have continued for a number of days – if not weeks, to be followed up daily papers.
Traditionally, the Sunday Times published their lead and on Monday everyone was following up. They still continue to try to do that but my view is that they are not consistent. There are times when they get a good story like the Jacob Zuma “Babygate” story and the Jacob Maroga R85-million. But if you look at how anybody with resources could have got the Jacob Maroga piece, it’s easy stuff – it’s not something that you can say that only the Sunday Times should do. So we’re going to try to do that.

QUESTION: But do you have enough staff to do that?
ANSWER: I think our (cross-title) politics team is actually the strongest in the country. It has about eight people and politics, for us, has become the mainstay of the paper. So we’re looking at politics, investigations and news breaks on the front page… I’m also very keen on education and health as those are minefields that are not explored properly so when we get more people (at the paper), we’re going direct them into those areas… I’m quite certain there are many stories that are untold, both about the hardships that people experience and the corruption involved in multibillion tenders.
The challenge is to be able to do that and retain the quality analysis of our own national politics and the geo-politics, for example, what’s happening in Greece at the moment.

QUESTION: The Sunday broadsheet market has got so interesting this year, with Ferial Haffajee now at City Press and taking steps to reposition the paper. What do you make it of it?
ANSWER: The paper that (previous City Press editor) Mathatha (Tsedu) put out was a distinctly African newspaper. The paper that Ferial is putting out is a paper that is trying to balance a mix of races. It’s a tough task that she has because she’s trying to downplay politics and introduce new elements. The paper Mathatha produced was by comparison heavy with very few light pieces – and it worked to an extent as the sales went up to about 200 000 but then it stopped growing.
If you’re Ferial, you want to attract mainly people who are reading the Sunday Times to increase your numbers. You need to be mindful not to lose the 200 000 people who are already buying your paper. It’s a balancing act of sorts, an egg dance. It’s a tough task but a very interesting one.
And, if you’re Mondli at the Sunday Times, for example, and looking at what Ferial is doing and what we’re doing at the Sunday Independent – even though we’re coming in with only 31 000 to 35 000 and still counting – you want to ask yourself, if you’re at 500 000 (sales), do you want to increase or maintain this? Are there things that you need to do that you think Ferial is going to do to try to steal readers from you or is City Press going to appeal to other people who not reading the Sunday Times?
So it means Mondli must check constantly what City Press is doing and what we are doing and I’m saying (for the Sunday Independent) that it has not been a year yet. Give us till the end of this year and, hopefully, given the resources that we will get, we will be an entirely different ball game. The paper that we will be putting out will be both setting the agenda and offering readers in-depth analysis on both local and international news in a way that nobody else is going to be able to do.

GILL MOODIE: There is obviously a decision by Independent Newspaper to invest in the paper?
MAKHUDU SEFARA: Ja, for the first time in a long time we now have a fulltime editor and deputy focused on the paper from Tuesday to Saturday – though it feels like from Tuesday to Tuesday — and we will be getting new people and things should improve. It is already much better now than a year ago in terms of staffing.

QUESTION: Last year was a horrendous year for everyone in terms of advertising. How are things are looking for Sunday Independent this year?
ANSWER: This is an interesting story. When the Sunday Independent was founded, the model was to have the paper sustain itself on the cover price,… (The paper cost R12.50 in the third quarter of last year) that it should be able to recoup production costs. As a result they did not employ someone to look after advertising for the paper and when the paper failed to sell the number of copies envisaged, that created problems. It needed to subsidised.
But effective last month, we have now employed someone to look at advertising specifically for the paper. And it is already looking good… She said last week that she had already made her target for this month. So we’re beginning to see the first sun rays to give us hope that this thing can be turned around if you pay particular attention to it… I’m quite confident that in quite a short space of time we will be able to announce that the paper is now viable.

Popularity: 7% [?]

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”.

Popularity: 9% [?]

William H Macy is such an interesting actor and here’s a good edit of a story thread from State and Main, a very funny film about a film crew that invades a small New England town. Macy plays the director.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Another of my all-time classic flicks: Wes Craven’s The Life Aquatic and Bill Murray at his best. Here’s the trailer. It’s pretty cool.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I watched High Fidelity again this weekend. It’s one my favourite all-time movies. Check out this YouTube vid of Jack Black’s character castigating a customer for wanting to buy bad music in the record store.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Who said newspaper’s are dead. Look at this data visualisation of the world’s top 100 newspapers which I knocked together and which tells another story. According to this newspapers are cooking like never before – in certain parts of the globe at least.
You can see from this how Asia is the undeniable top of the pops when it comes to newspaper reading populations with Japan, China and India between them selling tens of millions of papers in their top titles every day.
The newspaper industry in the US and Europe is small potatoes by comparison. Few US titiles make it into the top 100 and even fewer from Europe, pretty ironic when you consider that this was where newspapers were born.
Africa is even more dismal. Only one paper from the continent cracks the top 100 and that’s Al-Ahram of Egypt with a 900 000 circulation.
The Japanese papers are simply astounding with their circulation numbers. Yomiuri Shimbun with over 14million circulation simply blows one’s mind! Asahi Shimbun at 12 million is no slouch either.
By comparison, the US “greats” are Mickey Mouse operations. The grand New York Times slips in with a puny 1,2million and US Today, as that market leader, with 2.3million.
India and China you can pretty much understand with their enormous populations, but I find it fascinating that Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea produce a plethora of world-beaters. The consensus that newspapers still have plenty of life left in them in emerging markets seems to hold a lot of credence when you look at this.
Also kind of puts into perspective the Sunday newspaper “wars” that we see in SA. Here, we all seem to be fighting over crumbs. Surely in markets such as South Africa or Nigeria there must be potential for the same sort of performance we see in a place like Thailand. With a population of 66m, we’re not so far behind. Nigeria is a far bigger market. So what’s holding us back? Oh, wait. Literacy. Thailand has 92,6% literacy versus 86.6% in SA (this may be a generous estimate) and Nigeria’s 68%.
Or maybe our newspapers are simply too boring.

Popularity: 5% [?]