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Mail & Guardian reporters
The most sought-after newspaper readers in South Africa are turning to the Mail & Guardian – in their thousands. The M&G has surged way ahead of its competition. More upwardly mobile, young professionals are reading the M&G than any other similar product.
For the first time in several years the M&G participated in South Africa’s only comprehensive readership audit – the All Media Products Survey (Amps) – which takes a sample of 15 000 people nationally twice a year to find out who is reading what. The results are dramatic and show, unequivocally, that the M&G has become the first newspaper in its market to attract almost as many black readers as whites, and that readers in all race groups are also the best educated and most influential in the country. And the youngest.
With a slow, steady increase in sales in the last three years, the M&G has confirmed what it had suspected for some time. That of its total readership of 81 000, nearly half are black, coloured and Indian. And 14 000 of those black readers are professionals.
A dramatic comparison is with Independent Newspapers’ upmarket flagship, The Sunday Independent, which only has 2 000 black readers, but so few professionals among them they could not be counted .
The M&G not only has the best educated readership, but the overwhelming number of its readers are young, with 51 000 in the age group 16 to 34. In comparison, The Sunday Independent has only 21 000 readers in that category.
Among weekly newspapers, The Sunday Independent has a uniquely low ratio between audited sales of 38 468 until June and a bafflingly low pass-on rate with only 48 000 readers.
The M&G has been bucking the trend of declining newspaper sales without any inducements or competitions. Its latest audited circulation is 34 450, a 12% year- on-year increase.
The tough situation for many newspapers has forced some into costly competitions, discounted cover prices and giveaways in the hunt for lost circulation. Gauteng’s daily, The Star, is a good example. It has had a declining circulation during the past 10 years, selling an average of 214 000 copies daily in 1989, compared to 165 000 in the first six months of this year.
In the same period, Sunday Times went from 518 354 copies in 1989 to 456 850. But The Sowetan grew from 172 256 to 224 000 in the same period.
Lyndall Campher, group media director of Hunt Lascaris, said: “It’s good the M&G is back in Amps. It is by far the best written newspaper in South Africa, and I am not surprised at the figure. It has the edge, it always had, and it is a most underestimated newspaper.
“Its Amps figures prove what I have believed for some time, that it reaches the movers and shakers. The M&G does investigative journalism, and it breaks news, there isn’t another paper to touch it.”
John Farquhar, editor of Advantage magazine which targets the advertising and marketing industries, said: “Your Amps figures show there is reward in properly niched products. The M&G covers the intellectual spectrum, does things in depth and combines informed opinion. The M&G is seeing fruits of its focus now.”