My journey through Graphic 13

My thinking was, as we say in Akan (wofro dua pa na y3 pea wo), to wit, he who climbs well deserves a push.

So if a Ghanaian company was helping solve a national problem, the story was not only worth telling, but also worth sharing with all through a write-up.

So much later, after the meeting in February 2014, I conducted a successful interview with Mr Solomon at Graphic and did the feature. I was required to write features as well as several stories every month as part of my job schedule.

But as fate would have it, publishing experienced a long delay, although I had forwarded the story to my line manager the moment I was done.

Subsequently, whenever the interviewee inquired about the story, I told him that I was done and it was with my superiors, who would determine when it would be published.

Indeed, as the days turned into weeks and months, we both forgot about the article entirely, until one fateful day in June 2014, when I was required to pull it out from the system that was used for filing our stories.

I remember very clearly when that happened, on one normal day. It was one of those days that the pages in the newspaper needed to be increased because there was a torrent of adverts, and the then Features Editor of the Daily Graphic, Doreen Hammond, asked if I had an article I had written that had not been published.

I then remembered the electricity metering feature that I had written several weeks ago but had not been published and gave her the slug to look it up to see if it was publishable.

So it was that she found it fit for purpose and had it published in the newspaper. Then all hell broke loose.

Allegation

After the publication the next day, when I got to the newsroom, I noticed a slight commotion, with some of my bosses speaking quietly with each other and shuffling across the newsroom, and wondered what was amiss.

Not too long afterwards, I got to know that the confusion was over my feature story, which had been tagged as promoting a private business, giving an undue advantage to a competitor and I was even accused of being induced with money to write the way I did.

The editors in the chain through which my story passed to the press were all summoned to the MD’s office to answer why they allowed the publication of the story.

It was after the ‘emergency’ meeting that my line then-manager, Nehemiah Owusu Achiaw, explained to me what all the commotion I had seen was about, adding that they were asked to issue a query letter to me on the matter.

Saying I was livid would be an understatement. How could a mere writer who is not an editor decide what goes into the paper? I found it both amazing and troubling that I was seen as being that powerful to even influence my bosses.

When my boss told me they had impressed on the meeting not to issue me with the query as suggested, probably because they had seen that it wouldn’t add up, I knew that God wanted me to still stay at post.

I told him they should have issued the query letter and I would have gladly replied and also added my resignation because I couldn’t work with people who did not trust, appreciate and value me, but rather thought ill of me.

I felt so insulted and demoralised that, whereas I was trying to give my all at work, others were thinking badly of me. Even as editor of two papers, I never sought any favours before publishing a story.

If the story was true, factual, balanced, for the public good and all, it would be published.

I later approached the features editor and asked if indeed the story was too promotional to warrant it being put under the microscope and she replied that a few aspects could have been done away with, but the story was a good one.

Well, I had done my part by writing and it behoved my bosses to edit it as was fit for the newspaper.

But to launch an attack on my person was not necessary. 

Through my own investigations, I got to know that some industry players were not happy with the story because they felt it had given their competitor an edge over them.

It was they who called to complain to the MD and he took the actions that he did.   

Story

The story that caused the commotion said in part that “GEM has since 2004 been providing credit and prepayment meters to ECG, as well as the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum (MoEP) for the Rural Electrification Project (REP).

“Its credit meters have also been deployed under the Government of Ghana’s Self-Help Electrification Project (SHEP) and the National Electrification Scheme (NES) in many rural communities across the country.”

To be continued