It was the best and the worst of times, but now it’s a sad farewell to my Daily Maverick family

Daily Maverick moves from The Exchange to new offices off Kloof Street in Cape Town in July 2018. (Photo: Supplied)

By Janet Heard

1 Dec 2024

Daily Maverick managing editor Janet Heard reflects on seven years of riding the crazy news roller coaster.

The year 2017 was tumultuous. I walked into Daily Maverick in the middle of that game-changer year. The opener to the 2017 chapter from DM’s book, We Have a Game Changer, describes the year: “2017 was Daily Maverick’s biggest year since its inception. It also brought 12 months of turbulence unprecedented in democratic South Africa.

“The Life Esidimeni scandal shocked the nation. Struggle hero Ahmed Kathrada passed away. South Africans took to the streets in their thousands to demonstrate for a sitting president’s removal [Jacob Zuma]. The Western Cape was seized by a terrifying water crisis. And, of course, there was the #Guptaleaks.”

In mid-2017, the offices in Cape Town were situated on the sixth floor of the Exchange Building in St George’s Mall, off Strand Street. Co-founder and then Daily Maverick editor-in-chief Branko Brkic didn’t bother to keep a key for the front door. He preferred to meet at Clarke’s coffee shop in Bree Street.

The passion-fuelled writers whose bylines filled the front page of the website were rarely present in the rudimentary newsroom. They connected via the off-the-record “Carpe Diem” WhatsApp group. They preferred to work off-site – even prior to the Covid era – without distraction, from wherever the story took them.

Perhaps they were also put off by the fact that if you left or arrived for work outside office hours, as is the norm for muckrakers, you needed to take the hefty stairs that spiralled endlessly around the elevator shaft because the quaint lift functioned only with an actual human operator, Peter, who didn’t work before or after those hours.

If you happened to stay late and risk walking the stairs, you may have lucked out on the bonus of tapping your laptop keyboard on deadline to the rhythm of DMers Diana Neille and Bernard Kotze, whose Gypsy band Manouche would rehearse at the office after the sun went down.

After eight years of nail-biting struggle since DM’s launch, the year 2017 had ushered in a period of growth and experimentation. The revelations from the #Guptaleaks trove of emails were the “game-changer”.

Brkic had no choice but to secure some backup to his skeletal editorial operation. To date, he had processed every piece of copy and every photo uploaded to the site with the help of one dedicated copy editor – Tony Jackman, who would be relieved if his shift ended at 2am.

It was a dizzying challenge to keep up as the publication expanded its staff and its offering to insatiable readers (we also moved offices, twice). Sections like Business Maverick, Maverick Life, Maverick Citizen, Our Burning Planet, Sport and the DM168 print edition were launched.

A trip with young journalists to the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg in February 2020. (Photo: Supplied)

Bright new things sprung up: marketing, events and webinars, and Maverick Studios. There were books, a shop – you name it, we started it, with the most impactful and overarching being the Maverick Insider membership programme, which helped ease the ubiquitous 25th of the month pay-day burden for CEO and co-founder Styli Charalambous. It also enabled Daily Maverick to stay true to its public interest mission not to put its content behind a paywall.

Now, seven-plus years later, Daily Maverick recently marked its 15th birthday. Most of the celebrated original writers remain. Multiple new stars have risen, all plying their craft to deliver DM-style signature articles and in-depth investigations.

But young journalists do not just “arrive”. They get mentored, trained, guided, cajoled, interrogated – and sometimes praised – so that when they get their byline out, it is done so with trust, integrity and accuracy.

Over the past seven years, DM has recruited and bootcamped dozens of short-term or one-year interns. Putting enthusiastic aspiring journalists in the field with limited resources, often in conflict- or crime-prone zones, carries a certain risk. A considered strategy and team effort was required to build and nurture success. Hard-knock lessons were learnt each year.

Many interns have been headhunted, some burnt out, others moved on. Some, like Suné Payne and Yanga Sibembe from the intern class of 2018, hung on tenaciously, graduating to become expert writers and lead mentors to the next generations of young journalists who are lucky to get a break at Daily Maverick.

Daily Maverick Janet Heard Daily Maverick moves from The Exchange to new offices off Kloof Street in Cape Town in July 2018. (Photo: Supplied)

Worth noting also is that Daily Maverick is not a blog, a substack or a post on X. Our articles, videos, photos and illustrations do not appear effortlessly or miraculously on the web or in the DM168 print edition.

Behind the scenes, there are a bunch of people doing their thing, weaving their magic, editing text and videos, curating and crafting pages, fact-checking and ensuring Press Council compliance, sifting through the verbose stream of external editorial submissions. The team grind away at ridiculous hours to bring readers a quality offering and try their damnest not to fuck up. And if we do, to own it and fix things swiftly.

In turn, DM’s business units work tirelessly to navigate unimaginable opportunities in a chaotic, runaway media landscape.

I have had the pleasure of working with many of these crazy, passionate human beings – the stars upfront, who put themselves on the line under intense public scrutiny, often at risk to their mental health and emotional well-being, but also the backstage heroes.

They include colleagues on the “Mission Impossible” WhatsApp group, he-who-never-sleeps wordsmith Krash King and his subbing team, the newsletter creators who wake up at 4am to prep First Thing (just one of many letters through the day and week), the photojournalists who log back on after dinner or when the kids are asleep to edit one more image… and so it continues throughout the DM network.

I have worked in many newsrooms in the country and a few overseas. The grit, spontaneity, ingenuity and drive I have been immersed in over the past seven-plus years is unsurpassed, unscripted. It can be extremely brutal. I had my moments of fragility. A counsellor, Freddie, was brought in during the Covid isolation years to help people cope. He remains with DM today.

Taking stock now, 2024 has been a sizeable year, not unlike 2017. South Africa celebrated 30 years of freedom with a fair amount of turbulence, ushering in an end to ANC majority rule and the introduction of the government of national unity. Zuma, the president in 2017, made a startling resurgence in the political arena with his renegade MK party.

Struggle heroes Pravin Gordhan, Tito Mboweni and Louise Asmal have passed away. South Africans have taken to the streets to demand jobs, better service delivery, more accountability, less greed. Parts of the country have been seized by a terrifying water crisis.

In marking its 15th year of success, Daily Maverick recorded another milestone, notching up a record 14 million unique users monthly during the election period. More than 31,000 Insiders cover 40% of Daily Maverick’s costs. At the same time, the publication has been securing its future. It has been a tricky time as it battened down the hatches, tightened up, restructured and refocused, with Brkic passing the baton of editor-in-chief to Jillian Green, an unflappable colleague with superpowers.

As I now exit Daily Maverick, I take with me lifelong connections, an archive of memories, a few battle scars and a few more facial crinkles. I wish Green, the Maverick News team who became family to me, and every member of DM all the best. Long may the magical maverick spirit steer you far from the misery of mediocrity. DM

Janet Heard served in various capacities as one of Daily Maverick’s managing editors since 2017.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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