As I was eating my breakfast cereal this morning on my balcony I spotted a tortoise ambling around the next door neighbour's garden. Does it live there? Is it a pet? I've no idea where it has been hiding this winter, but his appearance probably says something about the coming of spring.
Today, it's 26 degrees outside and last night was warm. First warm night since I got here. The schizoid weather poses some tough problems. Like what to wear at night. PJs or tee and shorts? To ditch or not to ditch the down duvet? It enters at Number 267 on the list of Luxury Problems of the Western World. Other recent entries include pages coming loose in your book after lying with it too long in the sauna (192) and, the long-standing chart topper, 'a wardrobe full of clothes, but nothing to wear' (1).
It has been a while since I wrote about work. I think I shall do so now. I've been pondering, for some time now, whether what we're doing here is going well, or badly. Are we reaching anyone? Are we making any money? It's hard to tell as both the sales manager and the project manager are in London. I see a trickle of subscription forms come through on the fax here (say, two or three a week) but I fear that's a drop in the ocean. As to Paul's progress on getting African universities to sign up to campus-wide subsciptions to our services I could not be more in the dark.
Maybe that is because the story is not too good at the moment. As readers of this blog will be aware, Paul the sales manager was forced to leave Cape Town and return to London because of a family crisis. Well, without going into details, he was met by another when he got back home and has been a rare sighting in the London office since. All my sympathies are with him, and of course it is not his fault that 'events, dear boy, events' happened to put us all in the position we are now. But it's very frustrating to have a bottle neck at the sales end.
Also, as we have now moved into proper subscription mode, I can't just send the PDF of the mag to every Tom, Dick and Harry who I think should have it. Man, I hate business. I just want people to read the stuff. I guess that's (one of the many, many reasons) why I'll never be rich...
In order to delve a bit deeper into my trade, I've purchased a book written by Max Hastings about being an editor. Hastings was in the 80s tasked with turning the Daily Telegraph in the UK from a 19th century conservative rag aimed at retired colonels, into a 20th century conservative rag aimed at retired colonels with the exception of those who approved of the apartheid regime in South Africa, capital punishment and objected to women's suffrage.
Although I have little in common with Hastings (the words toff, blue chip, silver spoon, grouse and pinstripe all spring to mind) we do share one crucial thing. He was a writer (a journalist and a book writer) before being asked to kick some life into the Telegraph and, like me, was confounded by the different roles an editor and a journalist hold in a publication.
Great reporters rarely make great editors. Reason: reporters and professional debaters have their being in the immediate rights and wrongs of what they see. An editor's function, by contrast, is to know and manage the long-run position of his newspaper. This frequently means holding things steady through collective hysteria or a fashionable lurch.They are not Hasting's words, but those of his immediate superior, Andrew Knight, who had moved from the Economist to be Chief Executive of the new Telegraph. Knight's words, which FYI were prompted by a spate of strongly anti-Thatcher leaders penned by Hastings on the issue of US bombings of Libya, made me realise just how hard what I'm trying to achieve is.
As the editor and main contributor it is an impossibility to flit from one of the roles Knight describes to the other without ending up with a mess. As a trained journalist, I do want to make the splash, write the stories at their most contentious and so forth. But what kind of brain transplant will allow me, then, to pen suitably disinterested editorials?
When imagination fails, formula will have to do. So then the question becomes, what is our editorial policy?
Unlike the Telegraph we don't have any political affiliation. Yes, the parent company ResearchResearch is owned somebody who has ties to the UK Labour party. So it would be false to say there is no political influence from the top. My editor in chief usually gives my leaders the once-over and gives some much-appreciated feedback. But I refuse to pander to the incumbent UK government which is funding us, and try my hardest to avoid sounding like a white chick from Europe writing about things she's no real experience of.
But when the wind blows, on what should I lean? Everything we do has to be Africa-centred. It has to come from inside, as far as possible. But insofar as we should have any real editorial policy, I would say that it is simply pro-science. Pro-research. We look after our readers' interests. Our readers want funding. Therefore, we urge for more funding for research. And good governance of whatever means are employed to fulfil this aim.
Maybe I'm splitting hairs. Maybe nobody cares? But in a place such as Africa, where media freedom cannot be taken for granted and journalists sometimes face persecution, I reckon it's worth thinking about. I've already had some 'talkings to' from people in top positions who have opinions about what we should, and should not, meddle with. Best then to have a solid ground to stand on I think.
In the meantime, my schizophrenia seems to be in for some reprieve. Looks like the funders in the UK are happy to give us the money we (I) need to hire some helping hands. Once I've found some minions, they can do the journalistic hounding, and I can wine and dine the great and the good - and sweet talk them into thinking that Research Africa is a really, really great thing... Power of personality, it seems, is what being an editor is all about.
