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Merging the Black Press with Mainstream Newspapers in Post-Apartheid South Africa: a Phenomenological Study of Journalists at Sowetan Newspaper Between 2009 and 2012

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Merging the Black Press with Mainstream Newspapers in Post-Apartheid South Africa: a Phenomenological Study of Journalists at Sowetan Newspaper Between 2009 and 2012 Merging the Black press with mainstream newspapers in post-apartheid South Africa: a phenomenological study of journalists at Sowetan newspaper between 2009 and 2012. Anna Majavu A thesis submitted to Auckland University of Technology in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) 2015 School of Communication Studies Primary Supervisor: Dr Bryn Evans Page | 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures 6 Attestation of Authorship 7 Acknowledgement and Dedication 8 Abstract 9 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 11 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND 19 2.1 A brief history of Sowetan 19 2.2 Convergence as a feature of the current South African media landscape 24 2.3 Convergence and Black South African newspapers 29 CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE REVIEW 34 3.1 Introduction 34 3.2 Convergence in newspapers globally 35 3.2.1 Defining convergence 35 3.2.2 Convergence, downsizing, redundancies, and financialisation 38 3.2.3 Convergence and cultural change 41 3.2.4 Convergence and declining news quality 44 3.2.5 Convergence, centralisation of newsrooms and the impact on public journalism 47 3.2.6 Convergence in South Africa 49 3.2.7 Convergence in African media 53 3.2.8 Conclusion 56 Page | 2 3.3 Black news in mainstream media 58 3.3.1 Diversity in mainstream newsrooms globally 58 3.3.2 Racism in the media and negative portrayals of Black people in the media 59 3.3.3 Mainstream media and its portrayal of Africa 61 3.3.4 The Black Press and the “Black Angle” 62 3.3.5 The appeal of cross-over newspapers to Black readers 67 3.3.6 Conclusion 68 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY 70 4.1 Introduction 70 4.2 Research questions and purposes 71 4.3 Research Design 72 4.4 Research paradigm 75 4.5 Critical race theory and phenomenology 79 4.6 Researcher’s stance 80 4.7 Data sources 82 4.8 Data selection 83 4.9 Data collection 85 4.10 Data reduction and analysis 90 4.11 Ethical considerations 95 4.12 Conclusion 97 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION – Convergence, unethical labour practices, ‘juniorisation’ of the newsroom and the impact on news quality 98 5.1 Introduction 99 Page | 3 5.2 Theme one - Convergence is accompanied by unethical labour practices 100 5.2.1 Convergence means redundancies 100 5.2.2 Downsizing the workforce by age 102 5.2.3 Management attempts’ to sack remaining journalists 104 5.3 Theme two - Convergence and ‘juniorisation’ leads to ‘poor quality news’ 106 5.4 Theme three - physical illness related to separation from Sowetan 110 CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION - From Black newspaper to crossover newspaper 114 6.1 Theme four - Sowetan as the flagship daily Black newspaper in South Africa 115 6.1.1 The intellectual identity of Sowetan 115 6.1.2 Advocacy journalism, and writing in service to Black readers 120 6.1.3 Advocacy journalism in action in the “Nation Building Programme” 124 6.1.4 Sowetan ’s approach to reporting racism 127 6.2 Theme five - Sowetan ’s Black identity eroded and erased by the convergence process 129 6.2.1 Sowetan undermined as a Black title 129 6.2.2 Convergence as it affects advocacy journalism and culturally appropriate practices 132 6.2.3 Convergence expected to cause the demise of Sowetan 135 6.3 Theme six - could Sowetan become a crossover newspaper? 136 6.4 Theme seven - if Sowetan became a crossover paper, would that make the Daily Sun and other tabloids the new Black Press? 139 Page | 4 CHAPTER SEVEN: Participants’ perspectives as seen through the lens of critical race theory 151 7.1 Introduction 151 7.2 Critical race theory’s Discourse strand 152 7.3 Critical race theory’s Structural Strand 155 7.4 Conclusion 157 CHAPTER EIGHT: CONCLUSION 159 REFERENCES 164 Page | 5 LIST OF FIGURES Page 148 - Figure 1: Continuum showing the characteristics of trash, tabloid and service and campaign journalism (Steenveld and Strelitz, 2010, p. 536) Page | 6 Attestation of Authorship I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person (except where explicitly defined in the acknowledgements), nor material which to a substantial extent has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institution of higher learning. Signed: Dated: 25 November 2015 Page | 7 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my husband, Mandisi Majavu and my daughters Nkwenkwezi and Zara for their unwavering love and support, and Mandisi for his constant intellectual advice on this project. My very deep thanks go to my supervisor, Dr Bryn Evans, for the immense time, thoughtfulness and effort he put into in shaping this thesis and educating me on methodology. I would also like to thank AUT journalism lecturer Greg Treadwell, who suggested that I enter the MPhil programme, and Dr Frances Nelson, head of postgraduate studies at AUT’s department of communication studies, for her valuable support. I thank media academic and activist Dr Janet Bedggood, and her husband, sociologist and activist Dr Dave Bedggood, for their sound advice and encouragement. My thanks to my parents, Josephine and Stuart Weekes for support during the research proposal stage and to my brother John, who connected me to Greg Treadwell at AUT. I would also like to thank my best friends Trudy Wagenstroom and Woody Aroun for inspiring me through their lifelong political activism and independent anti-racist thinking and practices. I wholeheartedly thank the participants in this study for sharing their views with me. I began working at Sowetan at a late stage of the newspaper’s evolution and am full of admiration for my former colleagues who spent many more years at Sowetan , some of that time working under the severe repression of the apartheid regime. I thank all the Sowetan journalists who I worked with, and whom I had the privilege of regularly discussing politics, journalism, racism, convergence, and many other topics with. Dedication I would like to dedicate this thesis to William “Bra Willie” Bokala, the former news editor at Sowetan . Unfortunately I did not get to interview Bra Willie, an outstanding mentor, creative thinker and intellectual, for this thesis. Bra Willie seemed to be at work in the newsroom for about 16 hours every day, wholeheartedly committed to delivering the best quality news (not just getting the paper out). He led by example, encouraging us to serve the readers well. He inspired me and other journalists to realise that there was no story we couldn’t cover, be it driving hundreds of kilometres to meet a whistleblower under a tree on the side of a highway, or rolling under a gap in a closed government marquee and crawling from table to table avoiding security officials to find a mayor who refused to provide even the most basic services to residents in her town, or finding a way into a Cape Town refugee camp that the city administration had closed to the media, in order to interview the displaced people stuck inside with no food. Bra Willie’s history of reporting under terribly oppressive conditions during apartheid made him an inspirational news editor on these, and many other occasions. Page | 8 Abstract This is a phenomenological study which aims to gain an in-depth understanding into the phenomenon of downsizing and convergence on a major Black daily newspaper: Sowetan . critical race theory is the conceptual framework for this thesis. Critical race theory provides a justification for approaching this study abductively, and for searching for the point of view of Black journalists. The newsroom of Sowetan was converged with the newsrooms of other non-Black Times Media Group titles between 2009 and 2012. This study seeks to uncover how a Black newspaper, having had its newsroom converged with historically white, or non-Black newspapers, would maintain its intellectual heritage, underpinned by radical Black Consciousness, and consequently its ability to serve its predominantly Black readers. The Black Press globally has a tradition of covering stories not covered by the mainstream media and performing the advocacy function of reporting on and campaigning against racism. This study sought to discover if journalists working at Sowetan during the period under review believed that Sowetan would be able to continue its functions as a Black newspaper even after being converged with white titles, or if they believed that South Africa had entered a post- racial era where Black journalism was no longer necessary, and that convergence had appropriately positioned Sowetan as a ‘crossover’ newspaper. This study found that journalists on a formerly Black newspaper continued to value the idea of a Black press even after they were removed from it through redundancy or being transferred into the newly converged newsrooms. This study also found that Sowetan journalists were committed to working in service to Black readers, not only through their use of the “Black angle” (Clawson et al. 2003, p.786) when writing stories, or in spending most of their time in Black communities seeking out and covering news, but through their participation in Sowetan initiatives aimed at uplifting the Black community. This study also found that the Sowetan journalists and former journalists interviewed did not Page | 9 embrace the idea of either the tabloid media or the mainstream media as being preferable as a work environment to the Black Press, even after losing their jobs at Sowetan. Key Words: Sowetan, Black Press, Critical race theory, Downsizing, Convergence, Centralised newsrooms, Daily Sun, Journalism, South Africa, Phenomenology. Page | 10 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This thesis was first conceptualised in 2009 when, while I was a journalist on Sowetan , I heard rumours of cost-cutting, downsizing, convergence and major changes to the newspaper.
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