It is indeed painful to write reminiscences of one of the guiding lights of The Ethiopian Herald newspaper in the 1980s and 1990s because of the complexity of working in the Press Department at that time. As I was myself a member of the older staff of The Herald, I had to share the hectic life of newspaper writing, editing and producing every day of the week except on Mondays. I was also witness to the censorship and self-censorship that was so rampant at that time that journalists were more concerned about “political correctness” rather than professional competence. It was the time when ideology took the front seat and journalism followed behind and serving it faithfully.
I joined The Herald quiet accidentally. As a fourth year university student, I was often thinking about how to make of money to support my family until I finished my studies. One fine day, I walked the short distance from Sidist Kilo down to Arat Kilo where the Press Department was located and found myself in front of the Berhanena Selam Printing Press building. I asked people around the place where I had to go to speak to the concerned press officials.
I was told that the Press Department was located on the sixth and seventh floors. I took the left and landed on the sixth floor. Then, I accidentally or intuitively went to the Addis Zemen editorial office and spoke to the first person I met when I opened one of the office doors. He asked me what I wanted.
“I have written an article on the Iran-Iraq war and I wanted it to be published in the newspaper!” I told him, somehow maladroitly. The Middle East war was in full swing and an international hot issue. The man took the handwritten article and saw it at a glance. When he realized that it was written in English, he hand it back to me. He took the article from me and saw it and realizing that it was written in English, he told me to go to the Herald office and talk to one of the editors. I went to The Herald office and knocked at one of the doors. Narayan Eshuaran, the venerable Indian editor, was sitting at his desk and poring over a piece of writing. He looked up at me through his thick reading glasses and asked me what I wanted.
“This is an article I have written for the paper!” I said timidly.
“Give it to me!” He said and took the article and added, “Come tomorrow! I’ll see it and will tell you whether it is publishable or not!”
Esuaran returned to his work and I left the office with a feeling of indescribable happiness. I did not know how I walked back to the first floor instead of taking the lift. My heart was pounding under my shirt. I felt that it was indeed a great deal to work for The Ethiopian Herald as I realized it later on. It was also the beginning of my career as a short story writer and a novelist. My time at The Herald was indeed a time of hard learning the crafts of putting words to paper in a readable way.
I had always wanted to write and see my name appear on the cover of a book or as a byline below the headline of an article in a newspaper or magazine. But, I never expected my wish to be realized in such a fast and mysterious way. I returned to Esuaran the following day and to my great surprise the article was accepted for publication. To make a long story short, that was one of the happiest moments of my writing career.
The important thing about my “accidental” beginning of a career in The Herald was amazing even to me. I often think back at the time when becoming a journalist at the newspaper office was a tough bet because the standards or the professional demands were high. People like the famous writer and editor Ahadu Sabure and the novelist Bealu Girma had previously served The Herald in various capacities and they had set the standards high as they were a few of the best educated writers the country has produced.
When I joined The Herald, Yacob Woldemariam had left The Herald as it first editor-in-chief and became the editor-in-chief of the quarterly English magazine known as Yekatit or February, so named in memory the month when the Ethiopian Revolution of February 1974 swept the country quite spontaneously.
I met Yacob for the first time one morning when I went to Kiflom Adgoi’s office. Adgoi was the editor-in-chief at that time and the two were close friends as I realized as soon as I saw them talking to one another and laughing loudly. Adgoi, whom I was acquainted with earlier through Esuaran, introduced me to Yakob. He said, “This is the young man who has just joined us as a new writer!” Yakob flashed his characteristically broad smile and asked me a couple of questions about my studies and why I have joined the newspaper.
“I hope you’ll do fine here!” he added still smiling and wished me a good time there. “I’ve just read his article on the Iraq-Iran war and its looks fine!” Adgoi added, saying that the man in front of me was the first Ethiopian editor-in-chief of The Herald and that he was still contributing articles now and then in addition to his role as a kind of unofficial advisor to him.
In the following weeks and months, as I struggled with my work for the newspaper, Yakob was often coming and going, commenting on the articles that appeared on the paper. He told me that he liked my articles, advising me to write more so that I can mature on the job. I received his advice enthusiastically and my encounters with him were happy moments of learning from a veteran with such a rich experience and a flamboyant writing style. One day, he told me that he used to write to The Times of London in Britain and that his articles were regarded with high esteem.
That was not an act of boasting or arrogance on the part of Yakob. I went straight to the Press Library and read his older pieces and found them to be some of the best articles I had ever read even by Western standards. I decided to go to him often for advice and he was more than happy to give it to me and he treated me as “a promising writer” and I continued to learn from him on a regular basis. One day, he invited me to contribute to the Yekatit English magazine he was editing at that time. I gave him a short story I wrote in English, which was a story about the 1984-85 famine in Ethiopia, if memory does not betray me. He liked the story and published it for the next issue of the magazine.
What struck me about Yacob, besides his enthusiasm and his smiling face was his energetic comportment and his pride in his work and long life. “I’m 60 years young!” he used to say whenever he talked about his age. He walked so fast that one had the impression that he was not 60 but younger than 50. Although he often travelled in his old Volkswagen, he was not as overweight as many of his friends who used a car to commute between home and workplace. I never saw him with a glass of drink and or a cigarette for which journalists of the time were famous of indulgence. However, he once told me that he was a chain smoker when he was working on Addis Reporter magazine, perhaps the best publication in English that had appeared in the entire history of journalism in Ethiopia.
Whenever he wanted to write an article, Yacob would rush to Kiflom’s office and proclaim in his high-pitched voice,” Today I am going to write an article on the Ethiopian Revolution!” although he was not famous for being a revolutionary. In his informal discussion with colleagues and friends, he was known to be critical of the military government and even the revolution itself for this or that shortcoming. He liked to discuss issues with people and he was fond of listening to their points of views.
When the Yekatit magazine was terminated or folded sometime in the 1990s, he recommended me to take over him and made his intention official to the head of the Press Department. I was then transferred to the former Yekatit office, which was Yacob’s office and found the privilege to sit on his chair and write my articles on his old typewriter. Soon, Yakatit changed its old name and became Dawn and I did a lot of work on it before I left the Press Department to join the then budding private press.
My recollections of Yakob Woldemariam are a mix of nostalgia and regrets as the old guards of Ethiopian journalism are leaving the scene one after the other. Yacob was the best writer in English of his generation. He was keen to promote new talents and always ready to nurture the promising ones. Personally, he inspired me to greater achievements and hard work; without forgetting that he was also sometimes haughty without being overly arrogant.
His transfer to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs back in the 1990s was a real blow to mainstream journalism. However, he used that moment to pen a book of recollections of his time as a journalist, shedding light on the nature of his work as well reflecting on the history and the state of journalism in his time. It is a pity that he spent the last few years of his life in seclusion and illness, unable to do what he must have wanted to do, deep in his heart. It is a great loss indeed whenever leading lights of the old guard journalism school are extinguished and that diminishes us a little, particularly when we know that it is hard, if not impossible, to replace them with new people of their calibers any time soon.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 1 SEPTEMBER 2023
