Journalism’s end game

The real problem with print news is the advertising model it has wedded itself to, says noseweek‘s Martin Weltz, who spoke to Mandy de Waal from Cape Town.

“South Africans should be worried. Without an aggressively free press your whole democratic system collapses. If you don’t have a democratic system informing society, people will elect leaders the enmities. Zimbabwe placed no limit on advertising, the only limit was on editorial comment. When you do that you land up with a completely stuffed up economy.” — Martin Weltz, publisher, noseweek

Advertising will defeat itself. That’s the view of noseweek‘s Weltz, a former lawyer whose trade has proved useful at the monthly publication that is the muckraker of the South African media.

That’s not an insult. Muckraking is a fierce tradition of investigative journalism founded in the United States in the late 1800s to early 1900s when progressive political activists through the guise of reporters, novelists and critics relentlessly exposed societal ills at sweatshops, mines, prisons and asylums for the insane. The term became synonymous with individuals searching and exposing corruption in the public interest.

The concept of a “muckracker” was coined by Theodore Roosevelt during a speech in 1906 during which he likened investigative writers to a man using a muckrake in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, saying:

“Now it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor and it must be scraped up with a muckrake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed … I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such an attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.”

It is this fierce tradition of investigative journalism that gave us Watergate, exposed thalidomide and unsafe DC-10 aircraft, and back home exposed the arms deal as well as a slew of greed scandals from Kebble to Schabir Shaik, Porritt, Yengeni and back again.

“Everyone, everywhere, should be worried,” says Weltz during our conversation. “The media are like water and electricity. A few intelligent people realise this but the masses don’t understand. There is not enough conscious thought given to understanding that journalism is as vital to survival as water.”

Weltz maintains that, as with water, people will only understand the importance of journalism when it is curtailed.

“The real problem with the commercialism of the media is when the media get to a point where they don’t have a moral leg to stand on, and things have gotten a long way down the line. Already we’re in territory where there is maximum investment in advertising, and minimal focus and investment in editorial.”

During his time as a journalist, Welz came to understand that the balance between advertising and news had been profoundly disturbed. “The media have become totally dependent on advertising. The newspapers’ business model has changed over time so they are now not purveyors of news, but purveyors of advertising. The main client is not the reader but the advertisers. The focus has changed to keep advertisers happy.”

In this model, Weltz asserts that news departments are seen as loss leaders. “Management spends much more on the salaries and perks of sales staff than that of reporters. This is the emphasis of their business, so when the downturn comes the marketing budget is upped and editorial is slashed. This is because editorial is seen as a pure cost, not an income source.”

Welz grew up in the Cape, went to university in Stellenbosch and Pretoria thanks to a scholarship from the Department of Justice, and qualified in law before returning to the DoJ where he learnt to do auditing.

He was then appointed as a registrar to a high court judge and did articles for a firm of attorneys, but by that time had seen more than enough of the South African judicial system. “The law disappointed me because it held out huge promise, but delivered very little.”

So Weltz packed his bag, walked out of his office and across Church Square to the Pretoria News where he got a job as a journalist. “I am a curious person, but the law trains one to be sceptical because you need to continually test the evidence. I also discovered that unlike law you could achieve more, quicker and for far less in journalism.

“For me it became a search for truth and justice in the same way the law promises, but just doesn’t achieve any more. This is why people read the news. They want to know the truth and to see justice done. That’s what makes societies hang together.”