Shifting the reins of power

A sea change in media management has just quietly taken place. After 34 years at the helm as managing director (MD) of The Gleaner Company, Oliver Clarke, OJ, has stepped aside, though retaining executive chairmanship, and 37-year-old Christopher Barnes has been appointed MD after a three-year apprenticeship as deputy managing director. This is reminiscent of the smooth transition which took place at the RJR Group from the decades-long leadership of J. Lester Spaulding to Gary Allen, who came up on the journalism side of the company.

Clarke, an accountant, was himself appointed managing director of The Gleaner Company at the tender age of 32, having been recruited away from the Jamaica National Building Society by long-time Gleaner Chairman Leslie Ashenheim. Barnes comes from Alcan in the United States with an MBA. Both have served the PSOJ, Clarke as president and Barnes on the Economic Policy Committee. This underscores the point that media entities are businesses that must be operated profitably if they are going to be able to carry out their functions with independence, or even to survive at all.

money must be made

As Barnes, credited with improving the financial performance of The Gleaner, puts it, "We need to be able to make money to continue to support the overheads that we use to collate and disseminate the news."

And Clarke says in his bit in The Story of The Gleaner, "I've always felt - and it's been something I learned from our past chairman, Leslie Ashenheim - that if you run a media house and you don't make a profit, then, really, you can't be independent. You become too subject to pressures from advertisers or to those who lend you money, the banks."

An early Clarke move was the 1978 refinancing of the newspaper company by a debenture issue of J$4 million which was, at that time, the biggest public offering in Jamaica. When he joined, "the company was in fairly bad financial condition". The debenture issue was oversubscribed. "Even more than the money," Clarke says, "was the strong vote of confidence demonstrated by the public for The Gleaner" at a difficult time. "Many major businesses supported the debenture, as well as many hundreds of individuals. This success allowed The Gleaner to pay off its major debts and widen its shareholder base ... . It was that solid financial base in the mid-'70s that has helped The Gleaner to continue without any substantial financial hardship up to the current time ... . The Gleaner has been fortunate in not carrying any substantial debt since the mid-1970s."

I once heard an Ashenheim, this one, Richard, who was vice-chairman of the board for years, explain what sounded like a complicated formula for share ownership. The objective, at that time, was clear: No single shareholder, not even an Ashenheim - or a Clarke - can ever acquire a majority of the shares.

Oliver Clarke's stint as managing director has been bracketed by concerns about media freedom and media-state and government relationships. Not that these issues ever go away since the first newspaper was published, but there are cyclic periods of intensity. The 1970s was far more intense and difficult than the rerun of the concerns today. "There were a number of times in the 1970s when The Gleaner felt it was under direct pressure or threat from the Manley government," Clarke says.

Long-time Gleaner columnist Ian Boyne has written two important columns, back-to-back, on press freedom in light of the current debate on libel-law reform. In last Sunday's, 'Press freedom, or free-for-all? Implications of libel reform', Boyne argued that the oft-repeated view of boardroom interference in newsrooms is overdrawn. "There is not nearly as much boardroom interference in newsrooms that some people imagine. There is some interference - as every reporter and editor knows. But the 'danger' or 'concern' is more subtle - and systemic - than that."

balancing interests

Veteran journalist and former media manager Claude Robinson did an excellent piece as well in last week's Sunday Observer, titled 'The pervasive influence of ownership on press freedom'. Exploring the age-old tensions of ownership interests and journalistic independence in the press-freedom conundrum, Robinson concluded: "So wise media owners will balance their business interest with the public interest."

The pragmatic solution to the owner interest-public interest-journalist independence tension and dilemma is diversity of ownership reflecting different and, indeed, contending points of view. In this regard, the print-media landscape in Jamaica is a big disappointment. Jamaica has been a graveyard for newspapers, and the Observer must be commended for its longevity (backed by owner resources) and the competition it gives to The Gleaner.

The sharply divergent Observer and Gleaner reportage on the sale of the Sandals Whitehouse hotel to Gorstew Ltd provides an excellent case for ownership diversity! And, like Ian Boyne, I would be extremely surprised if any direct directive came from either boardroom to the newsroom of either newspaper.

Radio is far more diverse in ownership following the explosion of stations from the old duo of the cooperatively owned RJR and the government-owned JBC but, sadly, content diversity is much weaker. The Gleaner's foray into radio with Power 106 has created one of the most powerful and credible joint newsrooms in the country.

Jamaica has one of the freest media in the world, and Oliver Clarke and The Gleaner, on his watch, have done a great deal to keep this so. Clarke has rendered international service for press freedom in the Inter-American Press Association and the Commonwealth Press Union, two organisations which he praises for support in the tough days of the 1970s. He was active through the Media Association Jamaica (MAJ) in the green paper discussions of the Access to Information Act (ATI), a task on which our paths crossed outside The Gleaner as I also engaged the formulation of the ATI Act.

But this indefatigable advocate of freedom of the press has left the executive management of arguably the country's most powerful media organisation without the long-talked-about Press Council being established. The self-regulatory Press Council is intended to arbitrate between the media and persons who feel they have been unreasonably injured by the actions of the media. PAJ President Jenni Campbell, who happens to be managing editor of The Gleaner newspaper, should pick up the ball and get that press council up and running. And, The Gleaner should support the idea of a press council.

leading the way

The media have used the ATI Act poorly. The Gleaner has led usage, as it has so many other things in media, but mostly at the shallow level of investigating how many cents were spent on some little activity or other by politicians and public servants.

Meanwhile, much to my disappointment, an old and great newspaper is weak on hard investigative journalism. If The Gleaner, with its financial muscle and independence, doesn't do it, who should? The Sunday Herald makes an effort but has seriously tarnished its credibility with its glaring but undeclared biases.

The media, for example, led by The Gleaner and that other heavyweight, the RJR Group, could have, and should have, made the Manatt-Dudus commission of enquiry redundant by digging out and publishing the facts. As the enquiry is now bringing to light, there are a great many unhappy people involved with the matter and with a story to tell and a great many documents floating around which would have been excellent sources.

The fourth floor of The Gleaner Company [Editorial] can plot investigations, but it will be the fifth floor [office of the Managing Director, now occupied by Christopher Barnes] which will determine if the resource 'backative' will be made available.

The modest - but fair - modification of libel and defamation legislation now before Parliament will not alone be the big stimulus to investigative journalism. Already, self-censored journalists and their media managers are whining that the law has not gone far enough. Courage and Money will need to join Law to make more investigative work possible. As Claude Robinson puts it in his column last Sunday, "Truth is that speaking truth to power has always and continues to be risky - whether the power is economic or political." I have never believed that media have pushed the old libel and defamation laws to their limits. Media, instead, have generally hidden behind them, whimpering.

But one of the outstanding legacies of the Oliver Clarke-Hector Wynter Gleaner of the 1970s was its depth and courage on a shoestring budget. Barnes and Editor-in-Chief Garfield Grandison must move the paper beyond the social pictorials, which have bounced back with a vengeancse, and which may be marginally good for business, though this is doubtful, and from the soft feature stories cluttering up prime news pages, and into hard, investigative news stories requiring some sweat from digging.

Print journalism is facing a precarious future and newspapers around the world are folding. I strongly believe that critical value-added, that newspapers less dominated by the sound bite of radio and television, can offer are the longitudinal investigative story, the contextualising and backgrounding of the news, and deep analysis.

In smooth succession planning in a country notorious for its absence, Clarke hands over the MD reins to Barnes. The Gleaner remains a journalistically and financially strong newspaper and truly a Jamaican institution with which I am happy to be associated, an association which includes 23 years of writing this column and participation in some editorial matters over the years. In the days ahead, we will get to know just who is Christopher Barnes.

Martin Henry is a communication specialist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.