Flying SA flag high in UK - FT's Lisa MacLeod

Lisa Macleod: wanting to explore opportunities, and travel.

“South African newspapers are under a lot more pressure when it comes to cost-cutting and keeping staff numbers down, while still being required to produce high-quality products,” she says.

“In terms of technology, SA papers and journalists are much more switched on and required to understand and embrace technology as part of their job requirements, where it seems to me that technophobia is alive and well in the UK.”

One would expect that newsrooms in the UK, a country well known for its excessive 'tabloidisation', are always vibrant and full of gossip given the type of pounding stories produced in there.

Good employment opportunities

However, MacLeod demystifies that thought, saying: “Culturally, the newsrooms here are quieter and more conservative than in SA, where there is always a lot of loud and lively debate going on.”

As managing editor, MacLeod will be in charge of running the editorial budgets, managing the staffing levels and personnel issues of 550 staff members, including the foreign correspondent network. She will also be overseeing the day-to-day administration of the newspaper, reporting to editor Lionel Barber and deputy editor Martin Dickson.

Prior to her appointment as managing editor - a post that she will officially occupy in April 2010 - MacLeod worked at FT as a sub-editor, production editor, commissioning editor and chief production editor.

A heated debate has been going in SA for some time about white South Africans emigrating to other countries in protest of what they call the ‘excesses of the current government'. MacLeod, however, refuses to be painted with the same brush, stating: “I did not relocate to the UK for this job.

“My husband and I left SA in 2003. At the time I was managing editor at Business Day, and we did not leave for any political reasons, or because of crime, or because of the ANC. We felt that the UK held some good employment opportunities for us, particularly for my husband in the financial services sector, and we wanted to explore those opportunities, and travel.

Returning one day… perhaps

“I joined FT in September 2003 and was promoted to managing editor after being with them for almost seven years.”

MacLeod spent a couple of months at FT in 2000 as part of a management exchange programme set up by Avusa (formerly Johnnic), the publishing company of Sunday Times and Sowetan, and many other titles.

MacLeod, who admits to missing SA, says: “We do come back to SA three or four times a year to see our family. I have two stepchildren at Kingswood College in Grahamstown. My husband's family are in Durban and Port-Elizabeth and my parents are in the Eastern Cape, and we have lots of friends in Johannesburg.”

MacLeod, who spent a couple of weeks at the Philadelphia Inquirer in the US in 2000, from time to time meets with fellow South Africans working in the UK.

“We talk about politics, the job market in SA, and we all talk and think about going home at one point or another. A lot of our friends have left in the past couple of years and gone back to SA, but also to the Middle East and on to other countries, mainly for work opportunities,” she explains.