SO LONG, IT WAS GOOD TO KNOW YOU
In the noxious stew of today’s world, the recent closing of Newspaper House, home of the Argus, Cape Town’s evening newspaper since 1857, is a minor bit of gristle. But I began my journalism career there, so rather than a political diatribe in this week’s perch post, I’m going to indulge in nostalgia.
My first job on the Argus was selling advertising (I arrived in South Africa a notch above broke), but what I really wanted to be was a reporter. Brendan Boyle, a friend and reporter on the paper, wangled me an interview with Ian Wylie, the deputy editor, who told me to write something.
Fifteen hundred-plus words on my adventures in post-Prague Spring Czechoslovakia were six times more than he wanted. “But,” he said, “you can spell and you’re not a half bad writer. Maybe we can turn you into a reporter.”
There was no job opening, so I knocked on his door once a week until he finally said: “If I give you a job, will you stop bothering me?”
Three weeks later, on February 2, 1973, I walked with considerable trepidation into the Argus newsroom and introduced myself to Neil Lurssen, the news editor.
He pointed to an empty desk.
I went and sat down. An hour or so later I was dispatched to cover the opening of Parliament parade.
In those prehistoric days before computers, we banged out copy in “takes”, three or four short paragraphs per sheet of paper. A “slug line” — the story subject, date and reporter’s name — went across the top, the word “more” at the bottom and “ends” at the appropriate point. You made three carbon copies, which could be among the origins of the sobriquet “ink-stained wretch” applied to old-time reporters.
When I handed over my couple of hundred words, Lurssen made me stand in front of him while he scanned them. The fourth paragraph ended “… followed by two magnificently groomed white horses with pennant-bearing riders and sixteen shining brown horses in rows of four.”
“How do you know there were that many horses?”, Lurssen asked.
“I counted them,” I said.
Incredibly, my first-ever news story was a single column sidebar on Page One. It would be some time before I got on the front page again, however.
More than a few efforts ended up on the “spike”, a long nail extending from a wooden base on a corner of the news editor’s desk. Unworthy copy was stuck on it and left to rot; a perverse version of a hanged man left dangling on a public gibbet as a warning.
I’m willing to bet if the spike had survived the transition to the digital age, rather than seeing it as part of the learning process, someone would run to HR to complain about being “bullied”.
In a spike anecdote from the beloved “too good to check” category, a crusty reporter on an American daily wrote a piece slugged “Uranus”, with the added notation “Embargoed Until Notification”. The last copy he ever dropped onto the news editor’s desk allegedly read: “I quit. Spike Uranus.”
WHAT EVERY SCRIBBLER NEEDS
After a few months in the general newsroom, I was transferred to the weekend edition, overseen by Humphrey Tyler, a diminutive, old-school journalistic madman who pushed and mentored me. His most memorable piece of advice guided my ensuing journalism career: “If you can find a heartstring boy, pluck it.”
Over the course of a few months, city engineer Solly Morris decried me as “an enemy of Cape Town” for a series of stories on some his grandiose (and ultimately failed) development schemes. The Secretary for Transport accused me of penning “infamous lies” about his plans to desecrate the glorious coastal Garden Route with a (thankfully never built) six lane highway. A major Cape winery threatened to withdraw a massive advertising campaign and sue over a whimsical story about its cheapest vintages.
That none of the complaints cited any factual errors didn’t help my nerves when I was summoned to Wylie’s office.
You were fired with a “pink slip”, severance details written on a piece of pink paper.
Wylie had an envelope in his hand.
“Mr Pizzey,” he said, “you’ve given me a lot of trouble recently.”
“Yes sir,” I managed to murmur. “I’m sorry about that. Who have I offended lately?”
“I am in no doubt you have offended someone,” Wylie said, “and no doubt I shall have to deal with it.”
He handed me the envelope and said: “Open it.”
The note inside was a six percent raise, effective immediately.
“Thank you,” I stammered.
“Yes, yes,” Wylie said with a flap of his hand. “Well, go and earn it. Go offend someone. I’ll deal with it.”
Not exactly on a Pentagon Papers or Watergate level, but Wylie was backing his reporter against local political and economic heavyweights. Editors don’t come better than that.
Today, journalists are demoted and even fired to appease often anonymous critics who use social media to denounce anything they can claim offends whatever cultural sensitivity they espouse.
In many ways, the “good old days” really were just that. I for one celebrate them, and like no doubt many of my generation of journalists, mourn their passing.
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10 thoughts on “SO LONG, IT WAS GOOD TO KNOW YOU”
Great story. The older we get the better our stories become. You have honed yours to a fine edge.
I have the memory of Tim Taylor and me packing you off on a train out of London on your way to South Africa. (I guess a plane was involved eventually). Your parting words were “ Hey Tim, you can have my car top ski rack. Look after it”. Thirty years later you asked for it back. Ha!
Write on my friend… no spike here.
The trip involved a plane and a boat, and I never got the ski rack back
I didn’t know you worked at the Argus, Pizz. When G and I got married, the Argus photo editor was married to a close friend & took our pics — unfortunately he ‘forgot to sync his flash’ so there aren’t any actual pics. 😂
Hah! I have impugned the wrong paper — he was the Cape Times & not the Argus…. 44 years ago!
Ah the Argus .. my hometown’s evening paper that my dad would read every weekday after his return from work in the city, having shed his hat and briefcase. How things have changed.
inevitably when in the company of our generation
of journalists the chat turns to “the good old days”…of course we had the privilege of being
smack in the middle of the halcyon days of yesteryear…
judging from the current state of journalism
and the downward turn the profession is taking i wonder if a generation from now
those engaged in the work won’t be missing
their own good old days…
I “mourn the passing” of spikes at editors’ desks. Lots of copy I see these days belongs there.
More than lots, one laments
Hi Allen
Sorry I gave you a hard time over those horses. But thanks for bringing back memories.
You were — and are — a damn good reporter.
All the best
Neil
Neil, you did me my first favour and lesson with those horses, , and I remain ever grateful for having worked for you. Whenever I’m asked by aspiring journalists for advice, I tell them to get a job on a newspaper and work for editors who are tough but fair. I loved my days at the Argus.