Goodbye to The Weekender
I HAVE been a journalist for 36 years. I don’t know how to do anything else. My great joy is picking up a newspaper in the morning — any newspaper — listening to John Robbie on Radio 702 run through his start at 6.05 a.m. clicking through to CNN.com or watching the top of the news on the TV.
Whether you’re a print guy or an internet guy, its the journalism that turns you on and wherever you are on the technological ladder, this recession has knocked us all. Some folk get to put a gloss on their numbers but the truth is hard to hide — the credit cruch and its aftermath has been dreadful for journalism.
Already we have dropped supplements from Business Day and now, I’m afraid, we are having to close The Weekender. It will appear for the last time tomorrow.
I had big dreams for the paper, but we were never really able to get the basics right. Distribution was a nightmare and advertising scarce. It’s hard to ask shareholders to put their hands in their pockets over and over again.
There are lots of people to thank. Rehana Rossouw, The Weekender’s second and final Executive Editor, has been just brilliant, slogging away often on her own, fighting the good fight with circulation, marketing and the rest of the mix that goes in making a paper work. Katy Chance, she of the most hilarious TV column ever, has been producing the Review almost single handed. Simba Makunike, Tim Cohen, Julius Baumann all helped launch it back in March 2006. To Karen Bonsall, the publisher, who worked herself silly dealing with irate readers who couldn’t find a copy on Saturday and organising debates that have changed the way we speak to each other in SA, has been just wonderful.
Thank you thank you all, and everyone else I’ve forgotten because I’m just so, so, angry.
Best of all were you, our readers. I hope you had fun with the paper (when you could find it!). Thank you so much for your support.
Of one thing I am convinced, my original idea that there was a market for a Saturday read in SA was right. There’s a gap in the market and a market in the gap and they want more than they’re currently being offered. It’s how you get to it that matters.
There are some things I’d do differently if I had the opportunity again. I made some mistakes and so did other people. I’m not telling.
I am very sorry it is ending like this. I apologise to readers and subscribers. I apologise to my colleagues who have worked so hard.
And, I guess, cross as I am with them, I have to thank our shareholders, Avusa and Pearson Plc, for the R20m they each sunk into the last four years. It wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t peanuts either.
Cheers
Popularity: 100% [?]
November 6th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Wow – sad to hear. I subscribed from the second week, after giving up on getting it in Cape Town. Put up with only getting it on Sunday for ages. Overjoyed when it started arriving on Saturday. About a month ago my subscription came up for renewal, and I decided to cancel, due to cash issues.
The content was always good, the opinion excellent. Sourcing articles from FT worked well. The poker column was awesome. Lately, the error count had started to climb, and I found myself skipping over a few articles here & there (which seldom happened in the early days).
Give Katy an extra hug for me… my weekend wasn’t the same without her.
November 6th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Sad. Strangely, I never had a problem getting my regular copy. Exclusive Books in Tyger Valley and Wordsworths in Willowbridge always had a copy, which was well enjoyed over a cup of coffee. The magazine is a nother story: having read it once in Jozi, and rapidly concluding it was one of the very best I had seen, I was never sure that it was a regular thing because I never saw it again.
There is a market, absolutely. My only observation being, as someone in the market segment that I believe a Saturday read should attract, that while I enjoyed the Weekender immensely, I always found the FT Weekender my primary weekend read. The FT swanks, it does not pretend to be anything but a spectactularly snobbish thing, and it swayed its knowledgeable hips on every exclusice walkway – and I love it!
I so desperately wanted on occasion, to see the same swagger in the Weekender, but I see now that this was folly – to wear such alluring make up and clobber, one must have the funds and wardrobe.
Great try though – I enjoyed it all immensely while it lasted.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Bad news, in a big way. Best weekend read in SA. There is a market. Perhaps not for the entire population, but certainly for those who want an intelligent, entertaining read. And there are more of those in this country than we give ourselves credit for. Get the basics (consistent distribution) right and the business will follow. The Weekender is dead. Long live The Weekender?
November 6th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Oh noooooooo.
The only weekend read I have enjoyed these past few years. Even as a well connected consumer of online content, I never felt my weekend was complete without having had The Weekender to digest. I understand the business reasons behind its demise, but its closing now leaves South Africa woefully short of any quality weekend reads. In fact, I’d go far as to say, she has none now.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:26 am
I susscribed to the Weekender from its launch, delivered to my home in Cape Town. In those three and a half years, I can only remember a hanful of delivery problems; most of the time it arrived on time. So I’m not sure why you always talk about printing and logisitics problems – it wasn’t so bad, and the occasional wait was worthwhile.
What am I supposed to do without Katy Chance every Saturday? Please give her a prominent position at Business Day.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Great paper – sorry to see that it has gone. Well done for bringing the best read to our house every Saturday. May be one day…?
November 7th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Well, I guess that’s it for me and newspapers. Too sad for words as it proves that real quality has a very small market. And yes, please do give Katy a meaty challenge at Business Day, she deserves it.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:10 am
A sad day. The journalism was great. It was a refreshing breathe of ink and information. It should have survived.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I must confess that I haven’t paid for a newspaper in the last 10 (?) years. The corporate HO I worked for used to have 4 BDs delivered and I purloined one of them everyday even though I only had time to read parts of it at home. I read BD online everyday now and often wonder what I would be perpared to pay for the priviledge (over and above the Telkom ADSL & Internet access fees), not just for the read but for the ability to comment on articles and other comments as well. The information in newspapers seems to be of a different type of value, i.e. I think Sharon Glass is missing a trick by only selling recipe books on her website whereas recently my wife wanted a particular cake recipe immediately and would have paid maybe R2/5 for the priviledge of accessing that recipe right then & there. In the end she didn’t buy the book, just baked a different cake, but it is the immediate access to required (known?) content that has value on the internet. How “required” is the immediate unknown content in a online newspaper? From the comments above, it seems as if the challenge was in the delivery. Over the internet the delivery challenge is being answered with the portable Kindle, which in USA can now have a copy of the NY Times delivered to it on a daily basis. But I don’t think that there are that many Kindles around to make it viable yet. How great is it to live in bleeding edge type times! (Unless you are the one paying for it…)
November 7th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Really sad – The only newspaper where I have good memories of the circulation people, always sending an SMS when there were problems. The only time I griped about a non-delivery, Larry in the call centre was most helpful and courteous, a rare experience amongst call centres.
November 7th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I went to my local cafe today to pick up the last Weekender, but I was too late. Together with the FT, The Weekender became my compulsory weekend reading. Not because the paper carried the biggest news stories, but because of the quality of its writing, and the fun the reader had going through its pages. There was always something coming in unexpectedly, where you least expected it. My files are bulging with places to go and stay that I simply wouldn’t have picked up anywhere else. The graphics were great and it’s just such a shame that good quality reads seem to hover somehwere on the cutting line between life and death in South Africa. I am going to miss it because there simply isn’t another Saturday read I would bother to buy. But thanks for the ride.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Desperately disappointing news! I left SA in March 2006 when it was first published and was disappointed to have just missed it. I am now returning to SA next month and was looking forward to seeing the paper “in the flesh” after years of reading it online….
November 7th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Sad news Peter. Easily the classiest, best-looking weekly in the country. It deserved a better fate.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
As a subscriber I shall sorely miss my Sunday read. Back to the FT, but who needs “How to spend it” ? a complete waste of ink.
Thank you Rehana, Katy and especially Alexander for those entertaining road tests of insanely boring Mercs, BMW’s, Audi’s and SUV’s.
A sad day Peter.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Sad sad Saturday buying last copy of The Weekender. It was the only newspaper highlight of my weekend. Thanks Rehana and the rest of you for a brilliant collection of articles well edited and presented. And thank you for letting me write for you on the book page, it was a privilege. Very very sorry it has been dropped.
November 8th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
In a class of its own – very disappointing & sadly, next to nothing to replace it .. agree, a sad day Peter.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I don’t understand the complexities of newspaper publishing, but wouldn’t it make sense to keep some of the Weekender style and quality alive, perhaps by running the Weekender Review section as a supplement to the Friday Business Day. The commercial problems seem to relate mostly to printing and distribution, but if it piggy-backed on the normal BD process, which works extremely well, then these could be overcome. Would the customer pay for it? Well, a large number of people paid separately for the Weekender; so if there really is a market for quality in SA, then I suspect many people would pay. I certainly would.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Terrible news, both for the quality of our public discourse and for my Saturday mornings. I was on the receiving end of distribution problems as a subscriber, but the quality of the paper made it worthwhile (all the more so since the departure of Xolela Mangcu).
I hope some of the content can be absorbed into Business Day. And I hope that if the market looks up in a couple of years, you’ll try again. The market is there, and it is potentially a profitable one for advertisers trying to reach elites.
I loved Leigh Page’s poker column – surely there’s a place for it in the Business Day on Fridays?
November 9th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
I will miss the paper a lot. It had a lot of interesting stories and was so nicely designed. And as a freelancer who worked occasionally for The Weekender, I’ll miss Rehana. She’s easily one of South Africa’s most talented and experienced journalists and an extremely nice and enthusiastic editor. Thanks Rehana! You were really great to work for.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:52 am
I am very sorry to see The Weekender go as it was a truly brilliant publication.
However,it was inevitable-
The marketing was almost non existant.
Most of my friends and colleagues,many of whom read BD,did not even know of its existence.
Yes I know that it was referred to many times by Peter Bruce in his weekly column,but that was not nearly enough.
Revive it and change distribution processes but MARKET IT!!!
November 13th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I agree. Marketing was the biggest weakness and a number of people have made this point. We just could never find the budget required.
November 16th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Why would the shareholders swat the fly on the elephants’ backs to protect the elephants?
November 18th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I think the realisation of what I am missing is only now striking home with the first weekend gone without The Weekender. There are so few publications left who care or bother about covering cultural events, SA art and literature in any indepth way. The Weekender did it lavishly, giving much space to these interests.
My copies of The Weekender would lie around for weeks and not be chucked before I had read it.
What about an electronic version? As we cannot get the The Guardian here, I always read the Guardian Review supplement, online. It’s much preferable than not reading it at all. After all, this is the way of things to go.