Abstract
The Afrikaans women’s magazine Sarie celebrated her 75th anniversary in July 2024. This article describes the origin and development of this magazine based on two periods. The first is the period surrounding her inception and the challenges that the first editorial team had to overcome. The second period focuses on a later era, namely that of the most recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital revolution.
The starting point for the article is media-historical in nature, with the concept of a magazine as a “social barometer” used for both periods to indicate that this magazine has measured the cultural “temperature” of her time over 75 years.
Firstly, the social “climate” in which the magazine originated is described. This is considered essential context. The article then studies the magazine’s goals with her origin and development in 1949 and her position 75 years later within the fields of media history and magazine studies.
The research question is: How has Sarie remained a social barometer of her time over the past 75 years? As already stated, the concept of a magazine as a social barometer is used as a theoretical approach and starting point.
The method followed is qualitative and relies on various sources that include unpublished interviews, questionnaires, and correspondence with role players who still had recollections of the first period of Sarie. These data come from an unpublished study from 1985. For the second period on which the article focuses, namely 75 years later, especially one source was mainly relied on, namely the editor of the magazine. The qualitative research includes a qualitative analysis of primary and secondary sources, as well as a previously unpublished analysis of the magazine’s content.
The field of study is media history and magazine studies, with reference to the broader field of media studies. Both media history and magazine studies are briefly discussed. An appropriate literature review of relevant recent and seminal studies and texts within the field of magazine studies that help to contextualise the discussion is also presented.
This discussion is further expanded by looking at different interpretations of historiography by a variety of historians, and how media history – and therefore magazine history – could be classified and interpreted within such a broad framework. This is done precisely because magazine studies as a subdiscipline within media history should receive much more attention.
The starting point for the focus of magazine studies within the field of media history uses the question of the British historian E.H. Carr’s now classic Cambridge lecture series of 1961, namely “What is history?”
This is followed by a historical overview of the socio-political context within which the magazine was founded. The discussion includes a reference to the formation of the company known today as Naspers, and how Sarie developed from humble beginnings to becoming the leading women’s magazine in South Africa 75 years later. Naspers was founded in 1915 as De Nationale Pers, later registered as Nasionale Pers, and much later, simply as Naspers. With the unbundling of various divisions, the subsidiary Media24 was established. This division currently publishes, among others, the previously traditional Nasionale Pers titles.
Within this historical context, magazines are analysed as social barometers of their time. Sarie, specifically, serves as a social barometer of a certain period in the 75 years of her existence. The magazine displays clear characteristics of the “cultural temperature” of a society during these periods, as also suggested by the seminal work on magazine studies by Johnson and Prijatel, seen as the two leading international researchers in the field of magazine studies.
Furthermore, the media historical chronology of the “climate” – to continue the image of a barometer – within which Sarie came into being in the twentieth century is studied. Among other things, the profit motive to justify her existence was very clear right from her inception. This was a very different approach than was the case for other publications of the parent company at that time. The goal of these publications was rather a “service motive”, than a “profit motive”. One conclusion 75 years later, for example, is that Sarie magazine could certainly only continue to exist after the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital revolution if she made a profit.
Unpublished interviews with some of the early role players, including the first editor and editorial staff, as well as interviews with the current editor, contribute to the confirmation that Sarie can be seen as a “social barometer” and phenomenon of her time.
As said, the article studied the women’s magazine Sarie as a social barometer during the magazine’s early years and the present. The article aimed to build, as one researcher put it, that “critical contextual link” between the past and the present, and at the same time, show how a magazine could be a social barometer. The argument of how Sarie could be, and still is, that social barometer was built by highlighting a few aspects of her origin and development 75 years ago, as well as the current state of affairs.
The findings indicate how Sarie served as a social barometer during the first period with references to the development of Afrikaans as language, the position of women in society, access to information as a counterweight to ignorance, and also the financial challenges of the time. As a social barometer of the past few years in the build-up to Sarie’s 75th jubilee, the magazine reflects – and responds to – the digital ecosystem and the adjustments brought about by COVID-19, as well as the digital revolution, especially as can be seen with regard to the business model and brand extensions.
Another important aspect that could be shown is the mutual bond between editorial staff, as well as the bond with her target market. This is a factor that, in all likelihood, has ensured her success over 75 years. In Rossouw’s (2021) research, which is considered the first seminal work in South African magazine studies, she writes about the strong link between a magazine and its community. Rossouw also refers to the concept of the magazine as a social barometer that “measures” the state of that community, as well as how magazines adapt to their circumstances. Magazines therefore not only reflect their target markets, but, as Rossouw quotes Johnson and Prijatel, they are also “active members of that community”.
The article concludes that the magazine has been a dynamic product over 75 years – and still is. Moreover, Sarie’s 75th anniversary was celebrated amidst severe uncertainty surrounding the future of print media. However, true to her nature as a social barometer, the magazine continues to grow through successful brand extensions, as well as projects that do not only include media products.
The magazine has been able to adapt over 75 years to provide answers to new challenges, including the digital revolution and the unforeseen challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, even though this has resulted in the magazine today being published by an independent company, although still under the auspices of Media24.
Keywords: Afrikaans; magazine; magazine studies; Media24; media history; Naspers; Sarie; social barometer; women’s magazines
- The background photo on this article’s featured image was obtained from Canva.
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