David Yaffa

David Yaffa, proprietor of Yaffa Media, died in October 2018 aged eighty-four. He was a quiet empire-builder behind the scenes, but nevertheless had a big impact on Australia’s magazine industry.

He was just thirteen when his father died. By the age of twenty-one he was the running the family business which included a printery, a monthly publication and a syndication service providing cartoons for newspapers.

The publishing side of the business grew to five titles in the 1960s, and by the end of the century he had grown it into a thriving stable of more than thirty magazines and websites. This made it the second largest specialist publishing house in Australia.

He would have had many offers for the company over the years, but he loved the business and would never let it go. He had built it up, he was responsible for its success or failure, and there was no way he was going to let it fail or be taken over.

David Yaffa was once called the Greta Garbo of Australian publishing, a reference to the actress’s famous plea “I just want to be left alone”. Certainly he was an intensely private person, and he rarely ventured beyond the closed door of his office, but that was just the way he liked to run his business. He was in there every day from 8:45am to 6.00pm, much of the time on the phone to his senior management.

In this respect his style was ultra hands-on; in other respects he was somewhat invisible, most notably through his reluctance to hold management meetings. He preferred one-on-one discussions, or meetings of two or three people – three at the most, since there were only three chairs in his office.

In later years he did hold the occasional publishers meeting when he would amuse his managers with warnings to keep things confidential (“Loose lips sink ships”) and how tough things were for the business (“The wolves are at the door”).

His weekly memos to the publishers and sales staff could also be fun. While they congratulated the best performers of the week and exhorted the rest of them to do better, there were also prods at the under-performers. Once he referred to “the drones on the second floor”, which didn’t go down too well.

When Sydney was awarded the Olympic Games, David threw a party for the whole company – a pleasant surprise for everybody. As he anticipated, the Olympics were good for business and the company prospered further as a result. Apart from this, the Christmas party was the only time the whole company had a chance to meet and talk with him. In some years it was rumoured that he might make an announcement, or even a speech, but it never happened.

A profitable company needs to maximise income and minimise costs. Keeping a lid on costs was David’s forte. Spending on non-essentials was forbidden.

In the 1970s all the office staff worked on the top floor of the printers building on Butt Street, Surry Hills. A roof that didn’t leak was considered non-essential. What was essential was an umbrella to keep the rainwater off the AdNews editor’s typewriter. (AdNews was the company’s flagship publication).

If you wanted to make an interstate phone call you had to give the name, company and number to the switchboard operator who would then put you through, but only after she had obtained approval from David.

Some staff grumbled about the stinginess, particularly in the 1980s when other media companies were investing and expanding and generally indulging. Then along came the stock market crash of 1987, major changes to the media ownership laws and skyrocketing interest rates. Media companies that had gone on a buying spree found themselves unable to service their debts. Closures and redundancies followed, and 1990 became a horror year for the media.

Yaffa Publishing was no exception in that it made losses that year. The difference was that David Yaffa had not over-committed or taken on debt. He was able to ride out the downturn without closures or laying off staff. Suddenly he went from miser to hero as the staff kept their jobs. When things turned around in 1991 the company was primed and ready to take advantage of the recovery, which it did better than most.

It was a rare event for the company to launch a new title. Spin-offs from existing publications, usually directories of some kind, were more common. Occasionally healthy magazines were purchased from other publishers, but generally purchases were of low-cost, terminally ill publications that could be nursed back to life with a lot of tweaking.

Tweaking was another of David’s strengths. He was forever thinking about how to improve the bottom line for each publication, whether it was the paper stock, the page size, the binding, the number of pages, the frequency, the print run or the allocation of staff. He used several printers for his consumer magazines and switched magazines around to keep the printers on their toes. They knew if they did a bad job or charged too much they might find a magazine transferred to another printer.

His attention to detail was extraordinary. He picked up many a mistake that could have been embarrassing or costly. Unfortunately he was not shown the AdNews front page headline “Interpubic merger”, otherwise he would no doubt have had it corrected to “Interpublic merger” before it went to print. He was amused once when the phrase “a paltry amount” was published as “a poultry amount” but generally he was unhappy about mistakes as he felt they reflected on him and his company. Fair enough.

For those on the editorial side it was gratifying that the content of the magazine came first. In theory a good product attracted readers, and good readership numbers attracted advertisers. More revenue could then be allocated to improving the product further. Consequently he backed his good editors and let them get on with the job without interference.

Like most successful business owners David Yaffa was obsessed with the business. He was single-minded and demanding, but not the stereotypical, ruthless media proprietor. He was polite and fair, and would treat his staff with respect if they did their job well. You couldn’t ask for much more from your boss.

While the business was naturally all about making a profit, he was a proprietor with a true feel for the media. He was in it for the long haul and spent a lifetime building up the business his way, through trial and error, virtually single-handed.

His greatest achievement was the development of his father’s company into a significant force in Australian publishing while remaining independent. Few companies in Australia remain in private hands like this after nearly a century.

When he retired in 2012 his daughter Tracy became managing director and drove the 2015 rebirth of the company, renaming it Yaffa Media. Sons Max and James (publisher of AdNews) also work in the company. The third son Guy also worked in the company in the 1990s.