Stephen Mulholland, who has died aged 90, was one of the great editors and characters of South African journalism. His influence on the FM, and more broadly on the media landscape, was out of all proportion to his relatively short tenure.
He became FM editor in an era when nearly all journalists were neither knowledgeable about nor interested in business. Investment was an arcane world understood mainly by stockbrokers.
In the early 1980s, the FM appeared to have lost its way after the retirement of George Palmer, its legendary second editor. Mulholland was appointed. He brought a sense of energy, purpose and excitement. He felt the magazine had veered too far into political and labour issues that he knew were important but thought peripheral to the FM’s central focus — investment, business and the economy.
Occasionally he liked to remind a writer that “this is the Financial Mail!” Yet as apartheid died in the 1980s, he understood with insight and courage the crucial intersections between politics, the economy and investment. He was a strong free marketeer and believer in the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith. This gave consistency and increasing credibility to the FM’s coverage and commentary. He valued news breaks and strong political comment — a regular theme was how damaging apartheid and state ownership were to the economy.
In an age when bosses were largely unconstrained by HR processes, Mulholland was empowered to summarily fire people, and did. His temper was legendary — he was said to throw typewriters out of windows — but so was his loyalty. When a senior FM staffer was detained by the apartheid security police, he went immediately to the police station and demanded her release. The police had the sympathy of FM staffers.
In 1985, after PW Botha’s infamous Rubicon speech, Mulholland commissioned a leading psychiatrist to provide a professional analysis of Botha’s unstable performance. This was done and published, shockingly disrespectful for its time and most embarrassing for Botha. (The presidency did phone the FM to check if the psychiatrist was real — he was.)
If you can’t defend it before deadline on Tuesday night, you can’t defend it on Wednesday morning!
— Stephen Mulholland
Mulholland was open about his own need for psychological counselling. He liked to tell of his rough origins in Durban’s Point Road, the son of a “drunken Irish stonemason”, and remarked that his most influential father figure (and hero) was Joel Mervis, editor of the Sunday Times from 1959 to 1975. It was Mervis who appointed Mulholland in 1967 to launch Business Times.
He insisted on accuracy and value-add in FM stories. “You’ve got a week to get it right!” he would say. When a story entailed an interview with a leading CEO or politician, he insisted that stories be read back to ensure accuracy and fairness. “If you can’t defend it before deadline on Tuesday night, you can’t defend it on Wednesday morning!”
Steve, as he insisted everyone must call him, really could interact with kings and commoners. He saw himself as at least the equal of CEOs and cabinet ministers, but at the annual Christmas party could also be found having lunch with the messengers and drivers.
In 1986 Mulholland was appointed MD of Times Media Ltd (TML), the new company consisting of the Sunday Times, the FM and the new Business Day. He relished the challenge of leading the company, and was seen arriving in the mornings with piles of files he had taken home. “Running a business is all about ratios,” he finally declared, “but you have to know which ones.” Unlike being an editor with deadlines, the MD “is never finished”, he said.
“Mulholland was really ratcheting the returns for the shareholders of TML,” says one senior journalist who was there in the late 1980s. “So the unions hated him. I remember posters all over the newsroom with Mulholland with devil’s horns at the time of wage negotiations. He was a tough boss, but TML was never in better shape than when he was in charge.”
His success at TML resulted in Mulholland being invited to run Fairfax Media in Australia, which he did successfully from 1992 to 1996.
He was intensely competitive — a legacy perhaps of his achievements as a champion swimmer. After schooling at Durban High School he won a swimming scholarship to the US, where he was said also to have been a sergeant in the army or the Marines — it was never clear entirely which.
Mulholland upset some people, but as a man he was authentic. As an editor, he was a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher — and would have been appalled by Donald Trump.
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