Jack Beverley
Editor Sunday Nation 1962-1964
IT was Saturday night
and the interval had just been reached during the spectacular military tattoo being
staged in Nairobi’s Mitchell Park.
Unexpectedly, the
powerful arena lights were switched on again and, loud and clear over the
Tannoy system, came the crisp tones of the commentator:
“Tonight,” he said,
“East Africa Command is proud to introduce into our programme an unscheduled
and history-making event. They are making not only military history but also
newspaper history.
“They are carrying a
special edition of the Sunday Nation, a souvenir of
tonight’s tattoo. It is hot off the Nation’s printing presses
and special arrangements have been made to sell copies to you during the
remainder of the interval.
“It is the first-time
helicopters have been used to carry out a bulk delivery of newspapers in
Africa.”
Overhead, the noise of
the helicopters filled the arena. The voices of the talk-down controller and
pilots over on the Tannoy. In three minutes, they were down.
With their rotating
blades hardly still, 30 men of the 2nd Battalion of the Scots Guards
raced up, unloaded a bundle of each of the “Tattoo Specials”, and ran back into
the huge crowd.
The first copy was
handed to the GOC, East Africa Command; the second was stuck in the hands of
the Editor of the rival Kenya newspaper attending as a guest of the GOC and seating
next to him.
I am told the
expression on his face at this audacious piece of editorial and circulation
department enterprise was something to remember.
Within minutes every
one of the 3,000 copies of the helicopter-delivered issue was sold. But we
slipped up. We could have sold at least twice that many.
I hope I will be
forgiven for recalling this particular story, rather than telling of some big,
significant event. But I do so because
it captures something of the “let’s go” attitude that typified the whole
approach of the Nation group of newspapers
in those early, exciting years.
The whole operation
had been prompted by a “buzz” – ill-founded though it turned out to be – that
the opposition Sunday newspaper was going to advance its Saturday night
printing time so it could sell to the home-going crowds as they left the
tattoo.
For various technical
reasons, and because we had a greater distance to cover to get to the stadium,
there was an outside chance the opposition might, for once, beat us to the
punch.
And that we couldn’t
have. Hence the approach to the Army to land our papers in the arena in the
interval. For good measure, we turned it into a tattoo edition including a
special message from the GOC.
Getting the Army’s
co-operation was comparatively easy because of the immense goodwill the Sunday Nation had built up with the Armed Services.
One of the lesser
known activities of the paper was to run a special edition every week for the
Armed Services (Army and Air Force). It was called the Forces Nation and included four extra pages devoted to news and pictures all the
activities and sport of the different units.
It was an instant
success and almost over-night gave the Sunday Nation an extra circulation
of 2,500 copies.
In Nation House we were blessed with some of the most advanced production
equipment in the world. It provided an irresistible challenge to carry out the
most outrageous and unorthodox experiments.
For instance, when we
were making a drive to increase sales in Uganda, we were concerned that the
edition of the Sunday Nation going there was not
as up to date as it ought to be.
So, we tried out --
successfully – printing a Uganda edition of the Sunday Nation which was completely blank on the front and back pages, except for the
proud, blue-coloured Sunday Nation title lines.
The edition was flown
as normal to Entebbe and rushed to Kampala. And there, on our local press, we
over-printed a completely up-dated front and back page, including the
all-important UK football results and local sport.
Little wonder that
Uganda readers were baffled how such an up-to-the minute newspaper could be
printed in Nairobi, flown in by East African Airways, and be selling in the
streets on Saturday night with the UK football results less than an hour their
being broadcast by the BBC from London.
The fund of similar
stories of what was done in the early pioneering days to establish the Sunday Nation as the unchallenged, top-selling newspaper in East Africa is limitless.
But perhaps I can be
excused if I recall with pride an “outstanding issue” which reported the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which involved a seven-page edition change,
by Fleet Street standards, comparatively slim resources.
The words “outstanding
issue,” let me add, are not mine but come from a special message I received
from the U.S. Ambassador in Kenya.
Finally, I will always
remember the Sunday Nation as the newspaper
which made me take pep pills to keep me working at top pressure.
It was one
particularly tough weekend when all three East African territories went through
their most serious political crises, not many months after they had all
received their independence.
The army mutiny crisis
built up all through Friday and the Sunday Nation editorial team
started at 9 a.m. and worked non-stop until 10 p.m. the following day – without
leaving the office, and without any sleep.
Instead of the usual
two editions, our small editorial staff produced seven separate issues. The
demand for the paper was so great, to meet the demand, we had to cut 24 centre
pages, and produce a “Crisis Edition”.
The total figure
produced that weekend makes even today’s extremely handsome (but of course
established) circulation figure look slightly sick.
CRF: For many
of us who knew Jack Beverley in the early 1960s, he remains a very respected
and admired colleague. Indeed, he has achieved mightily from those distant days
when he became a reporter at the age of 14 in wartime Scotland and began
working in Fleet Street (once the home Britain’s finest newspapers) five years
later.
·
1928: Born in Grangemouth, Scotland.
·
1942: Reporter Grangemouth
Advertiser.
·
1943: Falkirk Herald
·
1944: Daily Mail, Glasgow … then on
the combined fellow dailies: The Glasgow Herald, The Evening Times and The
Bulletin.
·
1945: Sunday Pictorial and Daily
Mirror, London, staff reporter in Birmingham for the Mirror.
·
1946-48: Army service. Refused
commission so could back to Fleet Street more quickly.
·
1948: Daily Mirror London and
Nottingham (East Midlands reporter).
·
1949: News Chronicle, London and
Manchester (three times). Splash sub, diary editor, night news editor,
assistant editor.
·
1959: Night editor, Daily Express.
·
1960: Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.
Editorial adviser to the Aga Khan, editor Sunday Nation and Daily Nation (with
responsibility for Swahili newspaper (Taifa Leo) and other publications.
Pioneered what was probably the first web-offset photo-composed daily outside
the US.
·
1964: Night news editor, Daily Mail,
London.
·
1967: Group managing editor,
Westminster Press London. (13 dailies and 57 weeklies throughout England).
Director of seven WP operations.
·
1978: Special projects manager, The
Age Melbourne (including merger and control of two major Victorian suburban
groups. Chief executive, Syme Media in Hong Kong. Major role in launching
China’s first English language daily, the China Daily.
·
1985: Managing editor, The Western
Mail. Director of four Holmes a Court companies. Subsequently group publisher
and finally general manager regional publications, including responsibility for
Bell Group Press and St George Books.
Served
several years as director of Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association,
with two years as president, 1986-1988.
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