Graphic, universe of bold & beautiful
How on earth did i miss Monday’s launch of Graphic @ 70! Not only was I not going to miss this event; I was also going to ask Ato Afful, the MD, to give me three minutes to make “a few remarks”, intending to reel off a list of the personalities to whom I owe almost everything in journalism.
For me, Daily Graphic is not just a name.
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Like Ghanaian Times, the then (Sunday) Mirror and the then (Weekly) Spectator, it has, since 1972 (when I completed ‘A’ Levels), been my universe.
It is a universe peopled by lion hearts, a handful of people who amply seeded the profession with quality and bravery — the greatest wordsmiths whose pens dripped with the ink that will never dry up — and contemporaries who, like me, are faithfully watering and harvesting the fruits.
Beautifully crafted
In journalism school, we had been told of Kofi Badu, the journalist whose bedsheet and pillow case were news magazines and newspapers: he literally went to sleep reading them!
Until 1981 when providence led my feet to his office, I had only encountered his by-line on some of the most beautifully crafted sports stories and fearless commentaries.
We were told of this sports writer who carried his typewriter to the stadium, typing away his match reports as the game proceeded!
As a staff of the Ghanaian Times in the dying years of the 1970s, I was privileged to witness history. One of my all-time greats, Kwame Gyawu Kyem, then Editor of Ghanaian Times, pulled out a 10 cedi note after reading a story in the Graphic written by Kofi Badu and had it sent to him through a messenger.
When Kofi Badu wrote, there was a shortage of words.
Immortality
Immortality belongs to Cameron Duodu for authoring the longest-running columns in a diversity of publications and in as many countries. Fresh out of ‘A’ Level, I was reading Cameron Duodu.
In journalism school in the 1980s, I was reading Cameron Duodu.
Only this week, I have read a freshly baked Cameron Duodu feature. But my proudest memory of him was his 1967 decision to turn down an offer by the National Liberation Council (NLC) military government to take up editorship of the Daily Graphic in place of the substantive whom the government had just fired.
Graphic also means to me, one of the bravest and boldest female journalists of all time — Elizabeth Ohene. I used to faithfully file every feature she wrote, especially under the column, ‘Thinking Allowed’. Scrupulously principled, Elizabeth Ohene, as acting Editor of the Daily Graphic, refused to accept promotion by the Limann Government as the substantive Editor, insisting that only the Press Commission could appoint her.
At a time (during the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) regime) when the whole nation was yelling, ‘Let the blood flow’, her column was the lone voice of opposition.
She was not particularly a fan of J.J. Rawlings’ AFRC junta, but she used the pages of the Daily Graphic to defend Rawlings’ right to privacy against the Special Branch.
A principled stand!
My first published work in a newspaper was made possible because Ajoa Yeboah-Afari read the script, edited it and put it in the Mirror. Those days, reading ‘Thoughts of a Native Daughter’ was the first thing you did after brushing your teeth on Saturday morning.
What do you know of Frank Apeagyei? As the first Ghanaian to operate a discotheque — Playboy? As the founder of the Ghana Tourism Federation (GHATOF)? Or as a public relations guru?
Well, he is a journalist, trained in the UK. Those who so remember him, associate him with the Ghana News Agency where he began his career. Few may remember him as a contributor in the Daily Graphic because he wrote pseudonymously as Franky Fitt in the sports sections. But that is not his only association with the paper; in the late 1960s, he was a member of the Graphic Corporation’s Board of Directors.
Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh, one-time Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission (NMC), now its Chairman; Ransford Tetteh, two-term President of the GJA, and Nanabanyin Dadson, one of the profession’s finest writers, are Graphic’s gifts to the world.
They did not
Journalists, at least the finest, don’t die.
The ink does not cease to flow through their veins. In a profession in which objectivity, fairness and truth are somewhat tarnished words today, these are the men and women who refused, and still refuse to get so carried away with Constitutional guarantees that they overlook the harm their words cause.
Journalism, for them, was (is) not the stomach.
If there is one group of people they have fought most furiously, it is stomach politicians, to whom stomach journalists put professional discretion up for rent.
From afar, journalism is a bushy forest.
The closer I draw, the clearer I see the trees, especially the bold and the beautiful.
Thanks to Daily Graphic.