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Who is Dr Iqbal Survé – future owner of Independent Newspapers?

by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) Who is Dr Iqbal Survé, the man who is about to become South Africa’s newest media proprietor if the sale of Independent Newspapers goes through?

Yesterday it was announced that the Irish owners of Independent Newspapers had agreed to sell their South African division to Sekunjalo Independent Media Consortium led by Survé for R2-billion.

The deal, said a story in Business Report, is still subject to the final agreement being signed by both parties, shareholder approval by the Irish owners and approval by the Competition Commission.

Independent Newspaper is the biggest collection of English newspaper in the country and includes The Star, Cape Times, Cape Argus, The Mercury, Daily News, Pretoria News as well as publishing phenomenon, the isiZulu Isolezwe.

This is not Survé’s only venture into media ownership and Grubstreet revealed last week that his company, Sekunjalo, was backing a new medium-wave radio station for Cape Town, Magic AM.

The press muses amusingly

April 1 in the media world is a bit like casual day at school. Everybody pitches but no-one is really there. That’s because we are all browsing to ‘Net to see which scores got settled, who threw the best punch without anybody really realising that’s what it was, and who should we copy next year this time around.

“Zuma klaps Malema” #makesmyday

Zuma klaps Malema

World cup: The Mercury takes on Babel

In Durban, The Mercury’s editor Angela Quintal grabbed the 2010 FIFA World Cup as an opportunity for some creative thinking and innovation at her paper. Quintal decided to use the event to show the market (and her readers) that “as a newspaper The Mercury was not the conservative business read of old and could lead the way in terms of a fresh and different approach.”

World cup: newspaper editors innovate amid circulation decline

The 2010 FIFA World Cup has been the biggest South African news story so far this year. The tournament dominated media coverage over several months, both in the build-up to and during the actual event. Newspapers sat between a rock and a hard place during the world cup, as television ruled with its live broadcasts and online was first with live commentary, opinion and blow-by blow recounts.

The Mercury, IOL quotes MarkLives, forgets to credit us

The Mercury and IOL finally caught up with the bloggers and the tweeps. It has run a story on its front page on the letter those ridiculous lawyers of FIFA sent budget airline Kulula.com.