Let's fall back in love with journalism

The news media is struggling, yet its survival is critical for society - challenging the powerful, bringing news and diverse views. We need you too

- Luke Feltham Editor-in-Chief

We do what we do because of you. I desperately needed to hear those words when they were written by Sipho Kings after being appointed Mail & Guardian editor in 2020.

The world had turned upside down a few months earlier.

In March, we turned off the office lights as the Covid-19 lockdown set in, uncertain of what was to become of our society, let alone our publication. Not long after that we lost key staff, including our editors. The M&G under editor-in-chief Khadija Patel and deputy editor Beauregard Tromp had been a glorious place to work. We produced agenda-setting journalism. But more than that it was steered by a distinctly humanist outlook: both in the agency we had to craft our stories and the people-first approach we had to them.

Advertising disappeared overnight in the pandemic. The unbreakable habits of newspaper readers were broken, never to return. A media career seemed a terrible prospect.

Sipho's words were a reminder of how backwards that perspective was. Journalism is more than the clichéd calling. It is a relationship with those that you serve. We have made a promise to you to operate with integrity and honesty. And in return you continue to support our work.

Knowing that you have given us a mandate to what we do makes it a lot easier to get up in the morning.

Coincidentally, it is now exactly five years later that I hope those words will once more bring some small solace to my colleagues.

You have probably seen the news that the M&G has entered into a retrenchment process. We don't know the scale of restructuring yet, but these are invariably awful affairs. The uncertainty is debilitating. Somehow, in the middle of all of this, the team is still pushing out a quality product every day and week — something that fills me with pride and gratitude.