We Have A Game Changer

That was the answer that my mother gave me as I sat as a six-year-old at our kitchen table, pencil in hand ready to write my letter to Santa Claus.

It’s still the best writing advice I’ve ever been given.

Personal. As Maverick Insider community manager, that’s the word rattling around in my head more than any other. Membership is personal. It’s different from the buyer-seller model of a paywall. Members sign up because they’re personally invested and they want to be part of something meaningful. As our Insider base has grown, I’m still fighting to keep it personal.

The impact that our Maverick Insiders have had on Daily Maverick is usually communicated through a series of numbers. However many thousand now contributing “x” amount which covers “y%” of our running costs and “z%” of our payroll. And although the financial aspect is crucially important and literally keeps Daily Maverick in coffee, one of the greatest examples of Insider Impact has been the publishing of We Have A Game Changer.

It all started with the 2018 Yearbook — Daily Maverick’s version of an Annual Report. After sending it out to our members, we asked for feedback. Almost to a person, their favourite section of the yearbook was the answers from the DM journalists on why they choose to work at Daily Maverick.

That feedback was the kernel of the idea that morphed at terrifying speed into deciding to write something bigger: a whopping 100,000-word tome detailing the behind-the-scenes story of a decade of Daily Maverick. Not a collection of Daily Maverick’s best stories, but the personal story behind it all.

I called Styli Charalambous, the CEO and publisher of Daily Maverick, and told him my idea. “Branko’s going to hate it.”

There’s a mantra in the news business to never make yourself the story. Editor-in-Chief Branko Brkic lives by it and, well, let’s just say he isn’t fond of the limelight.

Over the course of a two-hour meeting, we convinced him. I can guarantee you that it wasn’t the prospect of entering the financial-drop-to-your-death world of book publishing. Branko had been there and done that. What clinched his agreement was the decision that it was finally time to reveal Daily Maverick’s side of the #GuptaLeaks story. And that we could, and would, put Marikana back in the spotlight. That we’d tell the story of how this plucky startup, through a combination of blind luck, grit and a sprinkling of innovation managed to do what many doubted would happen: survive.

With the Maverick team already running at 150% capacity, we brought on two external writers, Tudor Caradoc-Davies and Tiara Walters, to help me tackle this beast we've just decided to create. Both incredible writers, both with a depth of thought and understanding of why the story needed to be written, both huge fans of Daily Maverick, but with individual styles that couldn’t have been further from each other.

I’d love to say that we committed to an extensive planning session; that it was precision and professional and well-thought-out. The truth is, in our first meeting, the three of us sat in a tiny cupboard of an office and with rabbit-in-headlight eyes and energy akin to a shaken bottle of soda about to be opened by a toddler, and attempted to answer one question:

“What were the biggest stories of the past decade?”

Madiba, Marikana, Zuma, the rise of the EFF, the climate crisis, #GuptaLeaks… the list was extensive and, despite this, it wasn’t until weeks later that we realised just how much we’d still managed to omit. The sections were divided up and we agreed to a schedule of what was due, when. The entire time allotted? Two months. In book terms, that equates to about, um, 15 minutes.

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We Have A Game Changer: A Decade of Daily Maverick is released today. You can buy it directly from us here. Or at (most) good bookstores. Even at some crap ones.

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