RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

18 | denis beckett
of history. I prepared an appeal and presented it to Hal and
Jolyon jointly. Hal countermanded his decision on the spot. The
buildings still stand and are all cleaned up.
Power could get heady, even though it was wholly vicarious.
I wrote letters for Hal to sign, often congratulations on long
service or condolences over bereavement, but sometimes other
things. One day Head Office sent the eight main branches a draft
policy on Non-european Staff advancement, for comment. I
marked it “Mr Miller”, and added “I think this is small-minded.”
The memo came back to me with “Mr Miller” replaced, in Hal’s
writing, by: “DB. expand.” I started expanding.
In the next couple of days seven branches agreed, some in
one paragraph and some in two. I was still expanding. finally I
had a six-page response. The last line was an optimistic typed
“H.W.Miller”, leaving space for Hal to sign. as it stood, this
document was a worthless thing, empty imagination. If Hal
appended his extraordinary Stonehenge signature, several
separate uprights in a row, it would nudge the world a little.
Hal signed. (and in time the Johannesburg Proposals became
company policy).
Now, from Managerial at The Star (appalling non-word, but
printed in large letters in the parking bays – Mr Tyson, editorial,
Mr clegg, advertising, Mr Miller, Managerial) it was back to
editorial at the Rand Daily Mail. My logic had been that Big Ills
were on the go while I was administering copyright permissions
and staff picnics. Big Words were needed, I had to get back in
the fray
My logic was wrong, I quickly found out. first, an
extraordinary amount of what I was writing wasn’t Big Ills, it
was minutiae smaller than the minutiae I had been creating.
Second, there were never results to be seen from what you did
write about Big Ills. Third, the switch from command-centre
to newsroom was like the flag lieutenant swapping jobs with a
galley hand.
I’d known in the abstract that journalists are the mushrooms
of the publishing industry, kept in the dark and fed manure,