Of Columns and Columnists

Of Columns and Columnists (No1, 2010)

Columnists.   What do they do?  Why?  With what consequences?  Remember David Bullard?  His brief was to provoke.  Well, he provoked once too often – was accused of racism - and got fired.  The Sunday Times even fired him from writing about cars.  Then there was Darrel Bristow-Bovey who was fired from many newspapers. One of my students approvingly described him as postmodern journalist.   But BB was so postmodern that he forgot to acknowledge his sources. Ken Owen once wrote a column for the paper he edited, Sunday Times, and got fired for criticizing his own company.  He went sailing.  Pinky Khoabane recently got dragged to the Equality Court by an irate reader.   UKZN has had its own columnists, Derek Wang once cast a lens on Natal University’s foibles in the campus rag. A host of others used the LAN to satirise their dissatisfaction.  Some were subjects of restraining orders. One died and others immigrated.  The genre was lost.  The survival rates of columnists’ are not encouraging.

So where does this leave me?  Corporate Affairs has invited me to write a regular column for UKZNdaba.  It wants to reinvent the paper.  No more `grin and grab’ pictures of pouting individuals – the surest way to lose reader attention.  Our politicians who insist that their mugs accompany indigestible departmental adverts have not learned this basic design lesson.  Cutting edge design and flow that support the stories published attracts readers.  Also, it’s a good idea to create a sense of institutional identity and buy-in.   Engagingly presented stories about academic action, not egos is the draw card.

So, how to proceed?  I studied other columnists who still have their jobs.  Greg Ardé, published in the Sunday Tribune,  is still trying to replace Durban’s invisible Mayor.   He wants the Mayor’s job while retaining his current job.  Seems like a good idea in a recession.  Ben Trovato has a whole page in the Sunday Times.  If he gets fired, at least he’ll have a good nest egg while he reinvents himself as a car guard.   My favourite is Fred Khumalo who manages to traverse with good humour the contradictions between tradition and modernity, while Justice Malala cuttingly exposes political failings.  But he’s protected by the ethics of press freedom and his employer.  Then there is Jonathan Jansen, the new rector of Free State University.  For Jonathan, the country’s clear fugleman (leader) there are no Holy Cows, no political stupidity will escape his gaze, and expediency will not be tolerated, in his weekly contribution to The Times.  His drive towards solutions for education is relentless in the face of endless and destructive kludgemanship, which is always rewarded by the powers that be.

As a scholar of African cinema and orality I pulled out my publications on griots, imbongis  and Medieval bards. I re-examined West African cinema which popularized and reinvented griots in the modern age.   The characters in these films, and indeed, their directors,  cast a withering eye on corrupt African elites, abuse of power and self-aggrandisement. Maybe that’s why their directors mostly live in Paris.  These are the editorialisers, the satirists, the columnists of both early and modern Africa. Praise singers all, they reserve the right to offer critique in the courts of kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, dictators and tyrants, and democratic leaders of all kinds

Columnists, like comics, are magnets. Their job is to encourage readers to sustain their interest through the boring parts of papers and magazines, to thread their attention through the classifieds to the last page.  I mean, you know, there’s always that expensive advert on the back outside cover that must be amortized.  Columnists have license. They are paid to be critical. They are expected to be controversial.  Watch this space.   I am not sure if I will survive this column. But UKZNdaba will surely prosper with its new makeover.  

Keyan Tomaselli is Director of the Proto Centre for Communication, Media and Society.

Printed original version is available at: http://ccms.ukzn.ac.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=94&Itemid=160

The full UKZNdaba is available at:

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/publications/ukzndaba.aspx