Sunset (Eastern View), Friday, 21 August 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I was looking at the sunset when I decided to turn around and paint the opposite horizon, facing approximately southeast, toward the Southwest Mountains.

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It has recently come to my attention – no, correction – it comes to my attention every morning – that quite a few people happen on this site while searching for the Daily Sun of South Africa. It has finally occurred to me to look into this entity with the similar name and see what we may or may not have in common.

According to www.southafricainfo, Daily Sun is

the first South African tabloid aimed at the black working class. Initially met with disdain by the established press, its huge sales – and the fact that it has made new newspaper readers out of millions of South Africans – have earned it some respect. In the few years since its launch ... the Daily Sun has become the largest daily newspaper in South Africa.

The BBC, in ‘This World’ in 2006, began its story on the paper this way:

With its gory front pages, South Africa’s Daily Sun has become a national, though controversial, phenomenon. This World follows events in its newsroom in the run up to its 1,000th edition.

“So she's saying ‘my boyfriend ate my grandson’?” asks Deon du Plessis, the white part-owner of sub-Saharan Africa's biggest selling daily newspaper.

It is the afternoon news conference, and Deon's team is discussing the next day’s front page story. “That's what she's saying,” affirms Themba Khumale, the black editor.

It is Deon, as usual, who comes up with the headline. “O.K., ‘Boyfriend Ate My Baby’!”

Welcome to the extreme world of South Africa’s Daily Sun. ... The working class black man is the target reader ... He is known in the office as the man in blue overalls.

According to Karin Brulliard in the Washington Post in November 2008: 

A man killed by a swarm of killer bees. Marijuana muffins for sale in the townships. A notorious car thief nabbed by cops. A dead snake and two bottles of medicinal plants called muthi, found by a woman at the threshold of her preschool.

“That's a good one. Probably Page 3, actually,” publisher Deon du Plessis grunted on a recent morning to the editors of the Daily Sun tabloid, which the next day would cry: ‘EVIL MESSAGE OF THE MUTHI SNAKE!’

Du Plessis, a brash, hulking white Afrikaner, was presiding over another morning meeting at the largest newspaper in sub-Saharan Africa, pondering what would make its 5 million or so readers chatter most during their tea break at work.

It is a readership du Plessis knows well – not because he is part of it, but because he has cornered it since founding the Daily Sun six years ago and becoming one of South Africa's most successful and controversial media figures.

The Daily Sun reader, he says, is “the guy in the blue overalls”: a skilled black South African worker who is saving for a Toyota and owns a home in his township. He wants very much to know when police catch criminals, when evil spirits might be lurking and when mattresses are on sale.

Sorry for the overlap or repetition, but it’s good stuff and, besides, stumbling on this may be a rare chance for the guys in blue overalls or ladies in blue suits to know what the world is saying about their paper.

Here’s the difficulty. It appears the Daily Sun does not have a website – possibly one reason people click on the Google link to this blog, because they’re always looking and it’s just not there (or here). On the southafricainfo site, they assure us that we can click on the logo of the newspapers they describe and get to their websites – and for each of the others you can – but there is no active link for the Daily Sun. Apparently du Plessis is the world’s one newspaper publisher not concerned about the web.

In any case, people of South Africa, welcome to the Daily Sun Times. We have, among many other things, the real sun in common. And I might add that I too am saving for a Toyota, very much want to know when evil spirits might be lurking, and, truly, hope to soon be looking for mattresses on sale.

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This big sky is for a bird named Chip.