He controlled the switch, and his bare knuckle approach aside, he was capable of kindness.

Tenacity, cunning, attention to the little details, and a boundless heart were the hallmarks of the man, who was born a century ago today.

He was not content with being just the editor. “He appointed himself honorary uncle of his entire staff,” former New Straits Times (NST) group editor Lee Siew Yee, wrote in the book, “A Samad Ismail: Journalism and Politics”.

Former NST columnist Adibah Amin said in the same book many people had benefitted from Samad’s kindness and that he believed he had earned their undying loyalty.

“In some cases he had; in others, natural ingratitude and self-interest prevailed,” she said.

Brutally frank

Known as Pak Samad, he was a workaholic who was brutally frank on the weaknesses and failings of his charges.

In the newsroom, his fleeting shadow would pass behind the desk of a hesitant reporter who was struggling with the first paragraph.

Suddenly, like a clap of thunder he would shred the intro, and by the time the reporter turned to look back, Samad would be at the other end, yelling a lead-in to the story the way he saw it.

“Explain, clarify, simplify,” he would tell his reporters, many of whom felt well supported and protected by him, and therefore would do anything for him.

“Read the letters page. Tell me what news you can make out of the letters,” he used to gruffly tell reporters and news editors.

News editors had classified ads thrown at them first thing in the morning to develop them into stories, some of which made top news.

Samad put his paw in every pie, and skated around, chatting and trading innuendoes, whistling, humming and chortling devilishly.

A chain smoker, Samad typed, talked, guffawed and drank coffee all at the same time.

The eccentricities were a camouflage to a deeper and more astute personality.

Having been detained three times under the Internal Security Act (ISA), twice by the British in colonial Singapore and once in Malaysia, he appeared to fear no one.

Samad, who defined news as something someone wants suppressed, took political risks as well as commercial ones.

A newspaper, he held, is meant to publish news and not to please highly placed people.

This willingness to defend the core values of journalism created daring in an incredibly creative newsroom.

Wise, strong supremo

By January 1976, Samad had assembled a group of journalists skilled enough to steer the publications in the NST stable to new and more profitable heights.

Veteran journalist Terence Netto said: “Success would have been construed as validation of the underlying grounds of the New Economic Policy (NEP). But it was no easy task.

“Samad had to dig deep into his experience and skill to ward off nettlesome political interference from without and mercantilist pressures from within.”

Netto related two examples that would convey the nature of the interference and the way Samad dealt with them.

In 1975, Suhaimi Kamaruddin, the Umno Youth firebrand, visited Samad to pressure for the hiring of more Malay journalists into the English language publications in the NST group.

Netto recalled Samad readied for his interlocutor by getting the human resources department to compile a list of hirings since the time of Pernas’s takeover.

“The educational and other qualifications of the non-Malays were juxtaposed with that of the Malay hires. The latter tabulation was markedly lower in comparison with the former.

“Suhaimi slunk away in embarrassment after being shown the disproof of his assumption that Malays were being marginalised,” said Netto, who joined NST’s sister paper, The Malay Mail, as a sportswriter in 1975.

According to Netto, the incident did not dent the proclivity of mediocre but ambitious Malay journalists for snitching to their Umno sympathisers that so-and-so in the hierarchy was cold to Bumiputera advancement.

“Such backchat, and their fanning by ambitious Umno pols keen on cultivating acolytes within the NST, was the unavoidable by-product of politically aligned ownership.

“Only a strong and resourceful editorial supremo would be able to deflect its insidious effects.

“As anyone who knew Samad well was aware, he was always keen to cultivate and hire good Malay journalists, but a contempt for the mediocre was never far from his surface,” he said.

‘We are not selling soap’

The second example of Samad’s nerve concerned the question of whether the editorial department had dominance over other departments.

It occurred in 1975 when various departments were increasingly fitted with Malay graduates, some from multinationals where the pace of their promotions was thought to be slow.

An argument erupted between the NST night sub-editor and the production manager over a decision by the former to throw out a second lead story on the front page of a speech by prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein at the Malaysian naval base in Singapore.

The Johor Bahru bureau chief who had written the story based on the embargoed text of the speech, called up the sub-editor close to midnight to say that for some reason Razak had not delivered the speech at a dinner event.

Netto recalled the sub-editor ordered the presses halted despite some 20,000 copies of the first edition already printed and loaded on to waiting transport lorries headed for Kuala Terengganu and Kota Bharu.

He said: “The production and marketing managers, with an eye to paring costs, remonstrated with the sub-editor but Samad, reached at his house in Petaling Jaya, interjected to support the editorial decision.

“Samad, then the managing editor, remarked ‘we are not selling soap,” and in the morning after wrote a stiff memo affirming editorial primacy in the decision-making process.”

The “not selling soap” comment, said Netto, was a pun on the previous area of expertise of the marketing manager, a new recruit from Lever Brothers, the multinational manufacturer of soap.

“Within the NST the comment earned its fame as a feisty epigram and was a timely reminder that the infusion of technocrats into other departments must not tip the management balance away from the editorial department in a newspaper company,” said Netto.

Remembering Samad

Netto said: “Today, more than a decade and a half after his death, and in his centennial year, Samad’s place in the journalism and politics of Malaysia and Singapore is barely valued and scarcely remembered.”

He said bolstered by the inspiration and legacy of Samad, a centenary remembrance on “The Man Behind the Enigma”, will pay tribute to the man who inspired writers and politicians in Malaysia and Singapore on April 21.

The event at Gerakbudaya (2, Jalan 11/2, Petaling Jaya) at 3pm will feature as speakers the constitutional lawyer Dominic Puthucheary, former senator and retired professor Syed Husin Ali and Netto.

For more information contact Terence Netto (012-283 3515).