Laurence Gandar, the former editor of the Rand Daily Mail, says the idea first crossed his mind to launch this publication in 1956. At the time, Gandar was working at Anglo American, and he put together a proposal for the mining house to finance a "top-flight journal, after the style of The Economist and the Investors Chronicle". Anglo demurred, fearing a conflict of interest, so Gandar approached Henri Kuiper, the MD of SA Associated Newspapers, which eventually became Tiso Blackstar.
On March 6 1959, SA’s first standalone business newspaper launched, with an embarrassment of monochrome adverts from stalwarts like Old Mutual, Standard Bank ("the oldest name in SA banking") and, of course, Anglo American. (In one ad, Siemens breathlessly punts an invention: "One telephone on your desk doing the job of two.")
The Economist had seconded its assistant editor, John Marvin, to be the FM’s editor. That first edition was hardly the sort of sharply critical instrument of accountability we’d like to believe is emblematic of the modern media in the chaotic post-democracy era.
It was an edition heralded in its pages with a rousing commendation from Eben Dönges, then finance minister. In contemporary terms, it would be a bit like starting your anti-corruption NGO by affixing a bust of Atul Gupta to the wall.
Dönges — a National Party apparatchik instrumental in removing coloured people from the voters roll — said he expected the FM to provide "searching analysis of government policy", but warned this should be "responsible, informed and constructive". Not too critical, in other words.
Dönges — SA’s only elected state president to die (1967) before taking office — was no doubt deeply disappointed that the FM refused to be a lapdog.
Though the FM’s mission statement in 1959 was to "give impartial and objective comment on SA’s business life … [with] no political affiliation", it couldn’t resist sharp criticism of the government. In just its second edition, it tackled the issue of job reservation for whites, albeit in a phlegmatic, nonconfrontational tone. "Far from preserving employment opportunities, job reservation, by raising costs, may well, it is feared, have precisely the opposite effect," it said.
Marvin, writing in 1980, said it soon became clear the FM couldn’t push a nonpolitical line. "Sharpeville killed it. I asked for a meeting of the [editorial] council and told them frankly that I could not go on pretending that turmoil, raids and imprisonment without trial were not having an effect on the markets and the attitude of investors," he wrote.
As far as crusading journalism goes, it was no Rand Daily Mail or Vrye Weekblad. But in its realm of economic policy, at least, it was quietly and elegantly lacerating. So much so, in fact, that then prime minister John Vorster was moved to describe former editor George Palmer as an "enemy of the state" — a badge of honour at the time.
In November 1974, the FM accused Pik Botha, then SA ambassador to the UN, of one of "the most breathtaking falsifications ever presented to the world body", when he claimed racism wasn’t condoned by the government. The FM countered: "Discrimination is at the very heart of our society. It governs every facet of our lives from the cradle to the grave — and beyond."
Ever-optimistic, the FM said maybe Botha’s lies presaged a change, and that "perhaps Harold Macmillan’s wind of change is indeed blowing — 14 years later". In 1977, the FM also took aim at the appalling education policy bequeathed by Hendrik Verwoerd, which ensured black children going to school "enter to learn; leave to serve". It’s a system "poisoned beyond repair", it said.
In 1986, the cover boasted a picture of PW Botha, declaring: "A vote for me is a vote for poverty." By failing to implement real reform, Botha, the FM said, was "prepared to see this economy reduced to a wasteland, if that is what maintaining the status quo entails".
It would be like starting your anti-corruption NGO by affixing a bust of Atul Gupta to the wall
But the FM also tackled business sharply — much to the consternation of Anglo American, which midwived the FM and provided advertising as a "subsidy" initially.
Bloomberg journalist Robert Brand later recorded how Anglo delegated an executive to "speak to" Palmer, the editor at the time, after "yet another attack on the mining industry". Like Dönges, Anglo had miscalculated.
Yet within two years, the FM breached 5,000 copies, allowing it to hit a trading profit of R15,500. The credit for those years of success lie with the many top-drawer journalists to have passed through its pages — including Robert Nugent, the judge who headed the SA Revenue Service inquiry; political analyst Steven Friedman; and ex-Institute of Race Relations CEO John Kane-Berman.
Today the media industry globally is in considerable trouble. People expect quality news, for free, on the internet, and the traditional advertising model has been shattered. Since 2004, one in four publications in the US has closed, and here at home, half of the 10,000 journalists working a decade ago have left the industry. The unofficial slogan is, "do more with less".
Those publications that provide quality, in-depth reporting may be weaker, but they’ve defied the scythe. The New York Times, Washington Post and Financial Times are prospering. And the FM today is still stoutly profitable, boasting more readers than ever due to the distribution power of the internet. Which is just as well.
As Barney Mthombothi, one of the finest FM editors, put it a decade ago, even before the advent of Jacob Zuma: "A thriving media is a bulwark against tyranny … the man who said a newspaper’s role was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, got it about right."
• FM regulars, including the crossword and JSE pages, will be back next week
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