My last conversation with Shaun Johnson on Facebook
Woke up to the news that founding editor of the Sunday Independent, Shaun Johnson, had passed away and was momentarily incredulous. Born November 1959, he is just two years older than I am.
I have a flashback now to sitting across from him at his desk circa October 1999; he as Managing Director of Independent Newspapers Cape, I as Managing Editor of the Cape Times.
"Shaun," I said to him, "this is the third year I am drawing up budgets for the Cape Times, and this is the third year that I am asked to make cutbacks. When does it stop? When do we reinvest in journalism?"
He gave a deep sigh. "We don't," he said. "This company will sweat the assets of its core business and invest in in new ventures outside."
"Well," I said, "I've still got at least 25 years of working life ahead of me, and I need to be in place that's growing, not cutting back."
I handed in my resignation the following day.
Shaun himself left Independent Newspapers shortly afterward, moving next door to the old Argus building to become executive director of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. I had coffee with him a couple of times at St George's Mall over the next years, but we had little contact thereafter.
But I think back now to when we had our first proper conversation in 1996 when he was editor of the Argus and I was part of Independent's executive development programme visiting Cape Town for a few days to learn about the regional business.
Shaun had taken the Argus through a major redesign, and walked us through his thinking around the layout, the typography, and the storytelling. His enthusiasm was contagious.
And afterward, I asked him where I could go to get a haircut. "Go around the corner. There's a place called 5th Avenue with an Irish woman. Tell her I sent you." (Catherine at 5th Avenue has been doing my hair to this day.)
The last "conversation" I had with him was late 2016. I had stumbled across my copy of his book "Strange Days Indeed". (My wife has her own copy which she had studied at Wits.) I messaged him a picture of the book, saying "I need to get this autographed at some point". He responded with a thumbs up, four months later.
So farewell, Shaun. We were never friends, and our paths crossed at times in ways that were adversarial, but nevertheless, we had deep mutual respect and good conversations. In these times, that's relatively priceless.
