The cost of upgrading government publication Vuk’uzenzele into a monthly tabloid newspaper would be no more than the R40-million a year already spent on the product, says communications chief Jimmy Manyi.
While the plan is for the tabloid to appear monthly from the end of next month, Manyi warned that if newspaper coverage of the government did not “improve”, it could be “forced” to appear daily.
Vuk’uzenzele is currently published every two months. Plans to turn it into a “state newspaper” have caused waves, with critics saying the money could be better spent.
Manyi said last night the R40m was a fraction of what the government spent on advertising.
He said the new tabloid would not replace government advertising in the commercial media.
Manyi said the tabloid would be published in all 11 official languages.
It would not carry any advertising initially, meaning all the costs would be borne by taxpayers, but said it could do so later if market conditions so dictated.
Manyi said that if newspapers continued to publish too little information about the government, the paper would become a daily publication.
He was speaking during a dinner at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, where government communicators are gathered for a two-day forum.
Manyi said a host of issues were usually raised at government press conferences, but journalists would usually only write about one of them.
He said he would prove this point when he briefed the media on Thursday after the cabinet’s regular fortnightly meeting.
“I will test you guys and we will see how much of what I am saying will be covered in the media,” he said.
The tabloid, planned to be about 40 pages, with a projected print run of just under two million copies, would be printed on cheaper paper than Vuk’uzenzele, of which 1.6 million copies are printed every two months.
New appointments and extra costs would be “minimal”, Manyi said, as Vuk’uzenzele’s current staff, under the editorship of former Cape Argus newsman Tyrone Seale, would produce it.
Reporters employed by the government’s news service, BuaNews, would also work for the paper, providing an additional 14 staff members at no extra cost.
Manyi said the first edition - for May - was set to appear at the end of April. There are plans to publish it fortnightly from next March.
The newspaper will be distributed through the government’s Thusong Service Centres at municipalities across the country and possibly also by unemployed people, as a way of creating jobs.
Manyi said the idea was not his own, and complained that newspapers only reported on these plans now because he was in charge, as if he were a red rag held before a charging bull.
“I cannot claim credit for the idea. It was already in our strategic plan (presented to MPs last week). I only approved it,” he said.
Manyi said although he would not be formally involved, he would oversee what went into the paper, which would consist of “90 percent communicating government information” as well as opinion.
“We will have good and bad stories. We did not say we won’t publish bad stories. We will be honest about successes and failures,” he said.
He did not want to speculate whether the newspaper meant the need for a media appeals tribunal would fall away.
He also did not want to comment on whether the idea for a government tabloid came from a resolution by the ruling party at its national conference in 2007 that there should be an ANC newspaper, saying he could only speak for the government.
Manyi complained to government communicators last night that he had been “tortured” by the media about the paper.
He found an unlikely ally in the guest speaker, former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who consoled Manyi by saying he had been called names like “Hitler”.
Campbell supported the idea of a government newspaper, especially in South Africa, where relatively few people had access to the internet.
Deputy Minister in the Presidency Dinah Pule, who is helping to oversee government communications, told the media not just to take the government’s word for what it was doing, but to “be inquisitive, fearless, and representative as you script the story of a rapidly changing country”.
She added: “But as a government we will also script our story in our own way through the Vuk’uzenzele.
“As the media is going to script, we are also going to script it in our own way.” - Cape Argus