MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Category archives: Media
MagLove: Jay-Z rocks Billboard
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Naspers results shows strong internet growth
Naspers group has released its annual results for the year ended 31 March 2013. Revenue growth came in at 27% to reach R50bn (from R39,48bn)- mostly thanks to growth in the internet division and revenues from its internet units exceeded that of pay television. The depreciation of the rand also had a positive impact on revenue. Trading profits for the year were flat at R5,7bn as development spend accelerated to R4,3bn.
Equity-accounted associates, Chinna based Tencent and Russia based Mail.ru both reported positive growth and contributed R7,3bn to core headline earnings. Internet revenues expanded 80% to R34,6bn. Trading profits from the internet segment were 44% higher at R6,2bn. Ecommerce revenues doubled to R11,4bn.
Power FM: Who says you need a target market based on demographics?
by Gill Moodie. Power FM is set to shake up the already contested radio market in Gauteng not only in the battle for listeners but also in its approach to its target market.
Govt partners take major stake in Independent Newspapers
By Herman Manson (@marklives) The Sekunjalo Independent Media (SIM) consortium has (finally) announced details of the ownership of the consortium that successfully bid for Independent News & Media SA. The consortium will hold 75% of the shares in the newspaper group while the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), through the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), will hold 25% (but wait – it’s not quite as simple as that – read on).
The publisher, about to be liberated from an Irish holding company widely credited with stripping a once powerful editorial operation to its bare bones, owns the Cape Times, Cape Argus, Weekend Argus, Daily Voice, The Star, Pretoria News, Saturday Star, Sunday Independent, Diamond Fields Advertiser, Weekend Pretoria News, Daily News, The Mercury, Post, Independent on Saturday, the Sunday Tribune, Isolezwe and a host of community newspapers.
The magazine that baked itself a cover
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
eNCA.com – Late to the party but streetwise
TV and online seem to be such a happy fit so it has always perplexed me that eNews Channel Africa – or eNCA (previously eNews) – went for so long without a proper website. In fact, eNCA only launched its site – under GM Tim Spira – in April this year.
But even with eNCA still in the process of establishing its brand (the change was necessitated by the launch of a UK channel on the Sky pay-TV platform in August last year), the site’s numbers are exceeding its own expectations: at more than 270 000 domestic users in May, which was its first full month of in existence.
Grubstreet spoke to Spira last week to find out more about why it took so long for eNCA to establish an online presence and what mistakes they hope to avoid by coming to the party so late.
How to grow a magazine cover
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Hermaneutics: 24.com closes down Afrikaans news portal to save paywall strategy
By Herman Manson. Media24 owned 24.com has decided to close down Nuus24, the Afrikaans edition of news24.com, starting 1 Jul.
Nic Dawes on the biggest challenges of being the M&G editor
by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes is off to India in September, when he will take up one of the top positions at the Hindustan Times in New Delhi, it was announced recently. In this second part of an interview, Grubstreet talks to Dawes about change in the M&G newsroom, his legacy to the paper and the press’ recent battles with the ruling party.
Grubstreet: Do you think the converged newsroom – how you’ve integrated print and online – is the main mark that you’re leaving on the M&G?
Nic Dawes: I certainly think it’s probably the most obvious thing that I’ve tried to do here – to bring some of those (online and social-media) practices into our newsroom, to open us up so that the audience is not so much the audience anymore but participants in what we do.
You have to be really very sanguine and welcome the changes that are going on in our industry because I think they genuinely make us better journalists and make us produce better news products.
I think the other thing is the way we’ve tried to build capacity inside the paper, to keep on doing more thorough public-interest journalism without having new sources of commercial funding. So there’s AmaBhungane (non-profit investigative centre) and the Eugene Saldanha fellowship – these sorts of things, which do substantially broaden the base of what we do and also makes a contribution that goes beyond the M&G in terms of training journalists from other papers and from other countries in terms of advocacy.
And maybe the final thing is opening up a bit more to Africa – trying to bring more Africa coverage into the paper and into the website.