Mmegi: A newspaper of innumerable awards and honours (Part 1)
Lesang Maswabi | Friday August 16, 2024 09:15
Since its entry into the competitive private and independent media space 40 years ago in 1984, following its graduation from an A4 newsletter at Swaneng Secondary School, Mmegi, previously known as Mmegi wa Dikgang, has continued to attract a cohort of elite professionals across its production departments.
To date, this special class of men and women of different backgrounds and disciplines have and continue to uphold/hold high the media institution’s revered name in more ways than one can imagine. Through various forms of journalism ranging from news reporting (writing), columnists’ commentary, opinion, visual and social commentary, photography and newspaper design, the newspaper with its past and present staff, has accumulated a myriad of awards and accolades in recognition of the outstanding work produced therein.
Similar to other fields of national and cultural significance, professional awards constitute an important form of status recognition in journalism. Major national and regional journalism awards, such as the prestigious Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) awards, have generated a select group of elite news workers who have become symbols of professional excellence. Mmegi and its staff have never been missing in action as awardees on the many nominations for the various media award ceremonies, eventually becoming overall award-winners in almost all the categories.
However, not every journalist within the organisation has always had an equal chance of winning awards. Though journalists from different desks or backgrounds at Mmegi may have had unequal chances of producing significant works, each one of them with or without adequate resources has strived to deliver exceptional work in their own right. And in spite of their works not having gained more recognition from award judges at times, their toil has however often paid off as they have also attained great approval and admiration in other public spaces.
Moreover, not all award categories carry the same symbolic value. Winners in the most valued categories have further been boosted to the top of the stratification hierarchy and become what has sometimes been regarded as ‘an ultra-elite’. In the field of journalism, political, business and foreign news reporters are generally considered as ‘elite professionals’. This has however not dampened the spirits and resolute of journalists outside this ‘elite class’. They have demonstrated this through their ‘thinking outside the box’, by crossing over to other beats beyond their specified and defined specialisations. Continuous and thorough internal competition and critique, that has appeared to be somewhat harsh or even nasty at times, has also contributed to ongoing self development of the various individuals.
Amongst numerous noticeable awards that Mmegi has been awarded before and after the turn of the century, include the annual MISA awards, the Botswana Music Union (BOMU) awards and the Botswana National Sports Council awards. In 1997 Mmegi was bestowed with the Certificate Of Honour from the Francistown Centenary Celebrations Committee. The certificate recognised Mmegi for being the official sponsor of that city’s centenary celebration. Mmegi would again dominate the Newspaper Of The Year award which it has more than 12 times from the Botswana Institute Of Bankers since their inception in 1992. At some stage, Mmegi had won the award six times in succession. This was at a time when the late Zambian national Sam Khampodza had just come on board as the first Mmegi’s Business Editor.
Early human resource development
Indeed the brilliant work of some of the trailblazers from the breeding media house that is Mmegi, has not gone unnoticed as evident from their career progressions that would eventually lead to some of them going on sabbaticals or others being poached by the various sectors in the corporate world and related industries around the world.
Back in 1993, former editor and later managing editor, Methaetsile Leepile, won a three-month Harry Britain Commonwealth Fellowship, which was tenable in the United Kingdom. The scholarship was awarded by the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU). He would later attend a six-week long training course in Newspaper Design Appreciation at Westminster College in London and then moved on to Sheffield on attachment to a regional newspaper, part of a big commercial group. The group was called Sheffield Newspapers and Leepile was attached to two of their titles, one of which was The Sheffied Star, where Susan ‘Sue’ Schofield worked as Commercial Manager.
It was in Sheffield that Leepile met and subsequently recruited Schofield to come and occupy the same position at Mmegi. Upon his return from the UK based newspaper(s), Leepile brought with him a prototype of a refreshed Mmegi that had been conceptualised by a newspaper design expert there. Mmegi’s Graphics team would then use the prototype as Mmegi ’s template for the next six years until its redesign at the turn of the millennium in 2000. Leepile is also a renowned media communication, research, project management and development expert with over 40 years experience working in Botswana, the region and abroad. He is founding regional director of the MISA as well as founder of the Southern Africa Media Development Fund (Samdef), which he served as fund manager.
Current Mmegi’s Managing Director and former Mmegi editor Titus Mbuya was for most part of 1992 attached to The Sun newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio; The Detroit Free Press in Detroit Michigan; and The Trenton Times in Trenton, New Jersey in the United States of America. Mbuya was one of the few DPC editors (for both Mmegi and The Monitor titles) who had long developed a passion and appreciation for newspaper design, hence his undivided attention to all past and recent in-house newspaper designs and redesigns, even after he had passed on the editorship to those who succeeded him. Though a recipient of numerous awards over the past four decades, Mmegi would decline one award in the early 90s from the board of Newspaper Publishing Trust (NPT). When asked what the reason(s) were for the refusal of the award, Mbuya says: “We felt that we were being compromised and worse patronised. First by a questionable board that did not have any media expert amongst them, secondly and most worrisome we felt their (award) sponsors wanted to muzzle us from expressing our independent opinions on certain issues.”
Another one of Mmegi’s luminaries is former news editor, Keto Segwai who joined the newspaper in mid-1987 as reporter/photographer. His arrival coincided with sub-editor’s Gwen Ansell who would later in 1988, be declared a prohibited immigrant by the Botswana government. Before joining Mmegi, Segwai had done diploma in journalism at Africa Literature Centre in Kitwe, Zambia - a pan-African centre for art and journalism. While at Mmegi, Segwai took a sabbatical to do B.A in Communications, majoring in Mass Media at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania (U.S) - Class of 1993. Segwai shares some of the indelible moments at Mmegi.
“Though there was a darkroom for bromide processing, I setup Mmegi's first photographic processing. Judy Seidmann was responsible for graphics. Mmegi was the first newspaper in Botswana to go into Desktop Publishing (DTP) with those first Macs.
“Douglas Tsiako later joined as Leepile's deputy editor and Billy Chiepe as Judy's assistant.
“In those days we all regularly got involved in all newspaper operations that included distribution, advertising etc.
“My highlights included coverage of Namibia’s transition to independence and participation at The Weekly Mail training program in early 1991 - being the first from here to do so.
“In fact, many of us were afforded on-job training opportunities with various media institutions.
“I left Mmegi mid-1997 as news editor. I joined Botswana Guardian as deputy and later editor. I then went to Southern African Development Community (SADC). However, I returned briefly to the newspaper in 2008. The following year i joined The african.org pan-African news magazine of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria as managing editor.”
Former editor of the maiden Mmegi Monitor now The Monitor, Gideon Nkala also trained at US-based newspaper groups. Nkala is an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow. He did his fellowship at the Kansas City Star in Kansas City, Missouri (USA) in 2003. Nkala’s orientation to American journalism was done at University of Maryland, College Park, with visits and interactions at The Washington Post. He did further training at the Poynter Institute in St Petersburg, Florida and a further appreciation programme on investigations at the University of Missouri, School of Journalism.
Nkala was also a visiting fellow at the University of Cleveland, Ohio. He attended the National Association of Black Journalists Congress in Dallas, Texas. It was Nkala and I that would later jointly coordinate the second Monitor workshop in 2005 at The Big Five Hotel. The clinic was attended by all the Production departments. The late independent media consultant Isaiah Banda had been roped in as facilitator.
*The article forms part of the celebrations of Mmegi’s 40th anniversary. Part 2 will be published in next week’s edition