Has the supply of black newspaper editors dried up already?
It's taken some time but the Mail and Guardian have finally announced who is to replace little Nic Dawes as editor when he goes off on his Indian odyssey in a couple of months. The official spin is that a thorough search for the right person for the job had to be undertaken but closer to the truth is the fact that suitable candidates as newspaper editors are a bit thin on the ground these days. One only has to look at the sort of people Times Media have dredged up to edit their titles.
So the lucky winner is Angela Quintal who has been editing The Witness since 2011. By all accounts she is a dedicated and hard working journalist who probably deserves something more challenging than The Witness to edit, where she has apparently been hampered by a lack of resources. Presumably that means no money and not enough people.
She does have large shoes to fill though. Despite the need to be seen as obsequiously politically correct, little Nic has been a bold and courageous editor. The M&G is a tad too left wing for my tastes but one has to doff one's Panama at their investigative journalism. If only they would introduce some levity occasionally and employ some decent columnists as they did in the old days.
Chris Roper has been appointed editor in chief which, as we know, is a sort of consolation prize in journalism. Mondli Makhanya was given a similar title after he was booted as editor of The Sunday Times. Roper likes to come across as fashionably uncouth (as all lefty journos aspire to do) but, in fairness, he has built the M&G website over the years to "become a leading and credible voice". The M&G website's chief attraction is that it's free. It would be interesting to see how well it would perform should it erect a pay wall.
A recently departed (and somewhat disillusioned) M&G journalist described the paper as an "ageing hippy colony" and we wait to see whether Angela Quintal can bring some much needed gravitas to the position of newspaper editor. Compared to the UK media, our newspaper editors are intellectual and cultural featherweights. Put them in front of a TV camera and they mumble incoherently. Invite them to a black tie event and chances are they will turn up in jeans and a t-shirt. Quite simply they lack class and I find it quite extraordinary that newspaper publishers allow such people to represent their key brands.