Mail & Guardian reporter
The Mail & Guardian is moving to consolidate its position as the newspaper of the intelligentsia and political classes with a major redesign of the paper to be introduced next Friday.
The redesign coincides with our record-breaking circulation growth among South Africa’s high earners and intellectuals. The most significant growth has occurred among black South Africans: six out of every 10 M&G readers is now black, three white and one coloured and Indian. Readers from the earliest days of The Weekly Mail remain loyal.
The redesign will mean a newspaper that is easier to read and easier to find your way around. We have changed the order of appearance of a few sections to improve its balance. But all pages will be labelled to indicate which section of the newspaper you are in.
The heart of the newspaper, Inside, has been expanded and will appear under the heading Comment & Analysis, providing a better forum for social and political commentary. In our Friday section, we are upgrading and enlarging our listings of arts events and entertainment, making the listings a more prominent aspect of our service to readers.
Skilful use of new typefaces, column measures, photographs and white space will enable us to place more information, opinion or entertainment on a page, while appearing to place less. This has been achieved with the help of the team of designers that made our London-based sister newspaper, The Guardian, a trendsetter in newspaper design.
This will, however, come at a price. Increasing newsprint and print costs mean we will be increasing our cover price from R5 to R6,50 from next Friday. This will be the first time the M&G has upped the price of the newspaper in more than two years.
M&G editor Howard Barrell said: “We are on the cusp of a big take-off. We are providing what people want: high-quality, original journalism with spirit and attitude, unequalled investigative reporting and provocative commentary. Readers are recognising the dreary mediocrity served up by some of our rivals for what it is: not worth a dime.”