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Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) is a freelance journalist, media commentator and the publisher of Grubstreet (www.grubstreet.co.za). She worked in the print industry in South Africa for titles such as the Sunday Times and Business Day, and in the UK for Guinness Publishing, before striking out on her own. Email Gill at and follow her on Twitter at @grubstreetSA.
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Gill Moodie
So long and thanks for all the awards
Hi all... I thought you'd appreciate a little update here (October 2012): except for two people, all the members of this amazing little team have either subsequently left the Dispatch or were retrenched.

According to the latest available ABC figures (for the 2nd quarter of 2012), the Dispatch's digital sales are at 355.

Meanwhile, the paper under its most recent editor, Brendan Boyle, has taken back control of the website and is now at the start of the lengthy process of trying to rebuild the Dispatch's website into something special again.

What a crying shame that the passion and skills and website traffic and goodwill were squandered in the first place! Posted on 31 Oct 2012 09:35
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Gill Moodie
Secrecy Bill still looms - and is evil as ever
Update from Right2Know here, guys (Sept 21): http://www.r2k.org.za/2012/09/21/as-secrecy-bill-looms-r2k-announces-march-to-pretoria-for-international-right-to-know-day-28-september/ A march in Pretoria! Posted on 26 Sep 2012 15:19
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Gill Moodie
Isolezwe shows how it's done in ABC results
Sorry about a couple of typos... there used to be a function
on Biz where you could read your comment before it was
published. I somehow missed that step. Posted on 6 Sep 2012 11:34
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Gill Moodie
Isolezwe shows how it's done in ABC results
Hi Impartiality Please. I think the truth is that there's a debate on this single-copy sales -- as there is a debate on the use
of incentivised sales. If you look back at the (many) previous
times I have written about ABC results, I usually do focus on
total sales but this time around I decided to look at single-copy
sales... And this is very clear an opinion piece, neh? No need to get snipe, I think, and why not give us your real name? It's very easy to be nasty when you're anonymous but I'm sure we could have a more productive debate if you told us who you are. Posted on 6 Sep 2012 11:30
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Gill Moodie
EXCLUSIVE: NewsNow to close; iMaverick coming right
You make an excellent point, Ramon... and in fact I have
subsequently learned that NewsNow was meant to be more
analysis than aggregation. Posted on 3 Sep 2012 10:31
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Gill Moodie
EXCLUSIVE: NewsNow to close; iMaverick coming right
Media24 just sent out the press release saying:

"The Media24 publication, NewsNow / NuusNou has announced the title’s closure due to the economic pressure experienced in South Africa. Unfortunately the title did not manage to gain either circulation or advertising traction on the levels projected at the time of launch. The review of the business case revealed that the prospects were unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future. NewsNow / NuusNou is set to go to print with their last issue on 6 September 2012." Posted on 30 Aug 2012 16:00
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Gill Moodie
What I'd do with the Indy or Avusa
Oi vey, Sandile... you made my day! Posted on 1 Aug 2012 15:18
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Gill Moodie
Government-media relationship needs critical attention - study
The key thing to remember here is that government spokespeople are being paid with taxpayers' money to communicate what the government is doing with taxpayers' money and how it is measuring up to the electorate's expectations and its own promises. Journalists don't dream up stories but are actually acting on behalf of that electorate when people come to newspapers/TV and radio stations to help them with problems , often because these people feel that they can't get any joy out of their (elected) councillors or the authorities. So I'm not sure if journalists really have to feel empathy for spokespeople -- they rightly expect them to do their jobs... and respond to requests for comment professionally and, if possible, substantially in a way that will have real meaning to the readers and people who came to the journalists for help in the first place. Posted on 22 Feb 2012 08:45
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Gill Moodie
Avusa set to join newspapers houses' centralising drive
ADDITION: I spoke to Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley today about the sports hub and he confirmed the issues with the staff had been sorted out. Sports editors will be retained at all the Avusa titles while the veteran sports journalist, Archie Henderson, will head up the hub and liaise with the sports editors. The sports staff will work chiefly for their own titles, Hartley said, and do stories for other titles as time allows. Posted on 8 Feb 2012 11:48
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Gill Moodie
Chris Moerdyk pays tribute to John Farquhar
... And veteran media and marketing journalist Tony Koenderman emailed to say:

"The creatives didn’t like John much because he was absolutely consistent in exposing phonies, and he was unforgiving of those who “cribbed” their ideas (as he put it) from work done in other parts of the world. But if truth be known, he probably saw dishonesty even where it didn’t exist. He was rightly skeptical of awards, but carried it into what many saw as unremitting hostility. He wouldn’t accept that awards had even a small role to play in advertising, and found it hard to believe that an ad could win an award and still be effective. And he always seemed bemused and puzzled that his views provoked such an angry response. He knew he wasn’t being vindictive – even if others thought he was.

But if he didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him. The ad industry needs someone who is merciless in exposing inflated egos, pretension, intellectual dishonesty and self-serving hypocrisy. It was for these reasons, among others, that we gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award at the AdReview Awards last year.

On a personal level, John was friendly and generous of spirit, and tremendously loyal to his friends." Posted on 2 Feb 2012 07:55
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Gill Moodie
Chris Moerdyk pays tribute to John Farquhar
Alec Hogg, the founder of Moneyweb, which is a JV owner of Marketingweb, where Farks was editor-at-large, emailed to say:

"I remember John as a straight shooting, ever-smiling, deeply affectionate human being. The Good Lord broke the mould after creating John. In a world where conviction is scarce, commitment even rarer and independent thought more precious than rhodium, Farqs always stood out. We are all the poorer for having lost him." Posted on 31 Jan 2012 07:51
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Gill Moodie
Chris Moerdyk pays tribute to John Farquhar
And this just came in from Andy Rice, chairman of Yellowwood Future Architects:

"So sad to hear about John. His public persona was as a grumpy critic of what he saw as frivolous self-serving advertising, created by ill-disciplined "pony-tails", and there was certainly a bedrock of truth in this description. But the important thing was that he had the most honourable of motives, namely to champion work that spoke to consumers rather than to fellow creatives, and in this regard he was ahead of his time -- it's only been in the last few years that advertising has made a truly serious attempt to raise the standards of the profession (not that John would accept that it deserved such a name) whereas John had been beating that drum literally for decades. And he did it from a position of experience -- he'd been a successful adman himself -- rather than as an outsider looking in. He was thus himself demonstrating the properties of a strong personal brand -- consistent, passionate and well-communicated. He was also extremely loyal to those he respected, and I certainly felt that I could ask John at any time for advice, information and favours, and he would never let me down.
The stilling of his voice is a real blow to the South African advertising industry." Posted on 30 Jan 2012 18:03
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Gill Moodie
Chris Moerdyk pays tribute to John Farquhar
This came in after we put the obit up from John's close friends Wilma de Bruin, Petra Peacock and Cheryl Hunter:

"A few of us got together with John for lunch every month for several years and got to know him pretty well in that time. A more passionate man of advertising you could not get - and none more frank about it either. His dreaded pronouncement of an ad campaign as "crap" is a memory that will not rapidly fade. He did not suffer fools gladly and was never a sycophant. It didn't matter who you were in advertising, if he
believed you were producing bad work - and thereby bringing the whole industry into disrepute - he was the first to tell you.

But he was fair. Always willing to engage on an issue and talk about it; hear the other side of the argument. He was no stranger to disputes but was never personal in his assessment; a consummate professional.

He knew all the secrets in an industry riddled with them and he was a loyal and caring friend. He was also the best lunch date in town because his memory was elephantine and his story-telling humorous. A whiskey with Farks was always a pleasure.

He was happy to share ideas and give advice and was very perceptive. He became a friend whom we will miss dearly. and if there's an afterlife, he's giving them hell for not keeping it simple and selling the idea to us without wasting the big guy's time and money on fancy frills." Posted on 30 Jan 2012 17:16
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Gill Moodie
Deon du Plessis, larger than life and loved by all
And this from AFP correspondent in The Hague, Jan Hennop:

"It was somewhere in the winter of 1992 or 93 when we met Deon for the first time. A buddy and I decided we were looking at journalism as a possible career option and wanted to visit as many papers as we could to find out
what it was really all about. Back then I was the campus politics editor of Die Perdeby, the University of Pretoria's paper and my friend, Botha Kruger, was at Die Matie in Stellenbosch.

Well, we got shunned by most of the papers including the local Kempton Park knock-and-drop. So we decided to screw things and go and see if The Sowetan had some time to show to Afrikaans boys around their paper. We were not sure what to expect.

I remember this well. It was one of those cold Highveld days with an icy wind and everything bleak as we arrived at The Sowetan's offices in Commando Road in western Joburg. We walked in and asked a surprised secretary if we could have a look around the place and meet some "real" journalists.

She made a call and the next thing, here was THE EDITOR of the Sowetan to meet us in person. I'll never forget it. "Why would two Afrikaans boys be interested in the Sowetan?" Deon asked. Well I supposed he was a bit weary
that we may be two NIA agents in disguise, but when we told him why we were there, he went out of his way to make us feel at home. We got shown around the newsroom, had some coffee, checked out the printing press, had some more coffee, followed by a smoke in Deon's office and left with a huge impression of the man and the paper in our minds. So much so that I proudly drove around campus with a huge bumper sticker on that old beige 82 Opel Kadett of mine that read "The Sowetan: We are nation building", much to the annoyance of some of the more right-wing elements on the Tukkies campus!

A few months later I asked Deon if he would come and speak at Die Perdeby's bosberaad (I think it was somewhere in the Magaliesburg mountains) and he did, further inspiring me and a few others to join the ranks of the damned.
I am sorry I never called him a mentor, but he did make a huge impression and there's no doubt in my mind that he played a pivotal role in my choice to become a journo." Posted on 15 Sep 2011 09:09
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Gill Moodie
Deon du Plessis, larger than life and loved by all
And another priceless memory, folks. This from Weekend Argus assistant editor Viven Horlor, who was the paper’s news editor when Du Plessis was the deputy editor: “He once scrawled a guide to copytasting on a piece of copy paper -- those old pads we used to type stories on, and it went something like this: “A good South African story beats a good foreign story. A good Western Cape story beats a good South African story. A good Cape Town story beats a good Western Cape story. Cape Town stories beat them all -- everything else is foreign.” Posted on 13 Sep 2011 15:32
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Gill Moodie
Deon du Plessis, larger than life and loved by all
Dale Lautenbach, who manages communications for the Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank, worked with Du Plessis at the Cape Argus in the 1980s and as political correspondent for the Pretoria News under Du Plessis’ editorship. “Deon was a force of nature,” Lautenbach told me via email today. “A heart of gold inside a chest any bully would have envied (and he wasn't one) and a mind under that large forbidding dome of a head that was challenging, acutely observant (some of the funniest, pithiest comments, alternatively pure comedic noise and gesture) and a lot more open and progressive than he liked to appear to play it. He inspired a lot of people, myself among them and he kept us questioning, kept us looking for something. I guess we're still looking and always will. Rest in peace, Giant Boer, and in a place where hopefully you get to roll your own again.” Posted on 13 Sep 2011 14:53
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Gill Moodie
Deon du Plessis, larger than life and loved by all
This tribute to Deon came in after we posted the story - from freelance journalist Anne Taylor, who worked with Du Plessis at the Pretoria News:
"Deon du Plessis was an "old-school" editor, a real newspaper man. He was the boss, a real character -- and a sussed, committed and highly tactical political animal. While he may have played the "boer", he was sharp as a razor, subversive in every sense, and did not suffer fools. He led from the front, and set me on the trail of my love affair with print for which I shall ever be grateful." Posted on 13 Sep 2011 08:19
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Gill Moodie
Deon du Plessis, larger than life and loved by all
Hi Paul. Good point on Charles and one could also argue that the Sowetan was first because it was tabloid in format. But it's not a question of who came first, I don't think, but of who created SA's true blue (excuse the colour reference) "red top" in the tabloid format. The Daily Sun was that newspaper, which is why it became so successful and why, I think, most of us regard Deon as the father of SA's tabloid industry. Posted on 13 Sep 2011 08:16
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