By Herman Manson (@marklives) Media24 owned 24.com has decided to close down Nuus24 – the Afrikaans edition of news24.com – starting July 1. The group recently announced that it would be rolling out paywalls on the websites of its Afrikaans language newspaper sites (for Die Burger, Beeld and Volksblad).
When the group announced its paywall strategy in April it said its papers would also adopt a ‘digital first’ strategy which will see the newspapers breaking news on 
their sites. At the time MarkLives questioned the viability of the paywall concept if a free Afrikaans language site competed in the market for Afrikaans news.
Effectively 24.com is cornering Afrikaans language news content behind paywalls by closing Nuus24. It’s killing what is, by its own admission, a viable product to try and save the flagging fortunes of its print brands online. In the statement it released announcing the closure of Nuus24, 24.com said the site had “generated excellent engagement for both their audiences and their advertisers” before noting that it could not be scaled to the same levels as News24. Frankly, few sites could given the size of News24, and it’s doubtfull that the sites of the three Afrikaans sister papers could be scaled to News24 sized operations either.
Until the launch of the new beta sites in April, in preparation of the paywall strategy, little worth noting happened on the Afrikaans newspaper sites. There has been little indication so far that ‘digital first’ strategy has been effectively adopted by the newspaper brands.
The closure of Nuus24, coupled with moving the remaining Afrikaan language news sites behind paywalls, might well open up the market for a new player to enter. That’s not bad news at all unless you are Media24.
Hermaneutics is a column by MarkLives.com editor Herman Manson. It indicates as much opinion as reporting.
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