Elizabeth Ohene writes: My Graphic story

I am not quite sure how I tell my story of Graphic.

Even though I suppose the story of my time at Graphic would obviously come up, the story I want to tell is how I saw the influence of Graphic on life in Ghana.

With so many sources of news in today’s world, it is difficult to appreciate now, the influence of newspapers in days gone by and of the Daily Graphic especially in our lives in Ghana.

I do not recall the start of my relationship with the Daily Graphic newspaper because in my scheme of things, it has always been there.

That is not surprising because Graphic was established in Ghana in 1950, the year I started school as a five-year old. Before transistor radios became part of our lives, many villages had no source of public information apart from the Information Service vans that might make a visit once or twice a year.

But there was usually one intrepid teacher in every village, as there was in Abutia, who would have a subscription to the Daily Graphic which would be delivered late in the afternoon.

This newspaper would be read by everybody who could read English in the village, and there were not many such people in villages in the 1950s.

It was the sound of the newspaper vendor shouting ‘Daily Graphic’ on the streets of Ho in the middle 1950s that was my first introduction to the paper.

I soon discovered that the paper was the source of information of all current events and one copy served many people.

The story of how the paper came into being is of course, well known. Cecil King, the British newspaper magnate who owned the Daily Mirror group, came to establish the Daily Graphic and the Sunday Mirror in Ghana in 1950, which is why Graphic is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year.

He established the Daily Times in Nigeria at the same time.

Doubtless, Cecil King would have wanted to help expand the frontiers of the British Empire as it was then, but he was very much a businessman and he wanted the Daily Graphic to make money as the Daily Mirror was doing in Britain.

The Graphic advantage

In many ways, the idea of the paper being expected to be run on sound business grounds and to make money gave Graphic an advantage over every other newspaper in Ghana.

It is probably an advantage it has never lost throughout its tumultuous existence. Most other newspapers in the country were established to either pursue an ideological or political mandate.

But the publishers of the Daily Graphic knew that you must have a good product to be able to sell and right from the start, a lot of attention was paid to the design and look of the paper. The red masthead stood out and attracted attention.

The paper was fashioned very much on the Daily Mirror and some of the features were imported, like the GARTH cartoon strip, which I notice still survives in the Daily Graphic.

The language of the reporting was crisp and to the point and it had interesting and analytical writers. Because of its links with the Daily Mirror and the Daily Times, the coverage of foreign news was comprehensive.

It was, however, probably the Circulation Department of Graphic that did the trick in the domination of the information space of the country by Graphic.

A fleet of vehicles farmed out from the offices of Graphic as the paper rolled out from the press and went to all corners of the country to deliver copies of the paper.

It was a reliable and predictable delivery system, long before anybody dreamt of DHL. Indeed, if there was an emergency and you needed to get to some place in the country from Accra, you came and joined the Graphic delivery truck.

It was predictable that the newspaper would get into trouble with the government soon after the country gained independence. New Prime Minister Kwame

Nkrumah was not likely to tolerate such a dominant newspaper with pretensions of freedom of the press whose owners were from the old colonial master.

It did not take long for the tensions to erupt. First in the firing line was Bankole Timothy, a Sierra Leonean journalist and Deputy Editor of the paper who was well known for his wit and sharp turn of phrase.

After a few articles deemed to be uncomplimentary to the Prime Minister, Bankole Timothy was bundled out and the paper was taken over by the government.

There are various stories to this takeover, and I don’t know which of them reflects the facts of the case: Cecil King was forced to sell, he was made an offer he couldn’t refuse, the government appropriated the company.

Whichever one it is, Graphic became a state-owned company; and the journalists, very much under the control of the state.

But in many ways, the paper did not change very much.

Editorial

The setup of the Editorial Department remained the same. New reporters were taken through the ropes and made to learn the trade.

The newsroom was full of cigarette smoke, there were a lot of heavy drinkers and press time was press time, you had to be on time.

The Photography Department was impressive and attracted a lot of idiosyncratic cameramen who had a good eye for news photographs.

The Graphic photographic archives ought to be a priceless source of information, not only for the photos that were published, but for the many that did not make it into the newspaper.

The Sports Department had a huge following and covered a wide range of sporting activities. Football of course took a large chunk, with the stars of the day being fussed over; but athletics reporting was enthusiastic and educated.

Racing had a big and passionate following, and the punters all bought the Daily Graphic and instinctively turned to the sports pages.

For reasons that were never clear and have persisted to this day, it was not possible to sell the Sunday Mirror on Sundays.

It soon settled on a diet of fashion, beauty pageants, wedding photos, Agony Aunt and other columns that kept a large segment of the population entertained.

I came to the Graphic Corporation in September 1967 and left in January 1982. I don’t remember how many editors the paper had during that period, but it was one of the most unstable and unpredictable jobs in the world.

The paper assumed the status of a gazette where official information was published and sometimes even the editorials were known to come from the Ministry of Information.

But it was an interesting and potent mix; news became synonymous with the word Graphic, as in “it is not a rumour, it is in the Graphic”. It is of course the place for obituaries and top job placements.

When the economy collapsed from the middle 1970s and newsprint became an essential, hard-to-get commodity, the editorial section had to fight for space with the Advertising Department.

It is such a relief to see Graphic blossoming today, with editors able to do their job under the constitutional protection of the Media Commission.

It is interesting to see that Graphic never lost its business instincts. I was out of the country when it changed the title name to People’s Daily Graphic.

That ideological implant was never going to take.