The Mail & Guardian has done it again, and this time it is journalist Sam Sole who is bringing home the bacon.
Hours after the M&G reported in last Friday’s edition that Wisani wa ka Ngobeni had won the news category of the Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards 2003 in the northern/southern region, Sole, who is based in Durban, was crowned KwaZulu-Natal regional winner in the news category.
Ngobeni had won for his exposé of Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota’s undeclared business interests; Sole won for his story in November 2002, breaking the news of the Scorpions investigation into Deputy President Jacob Zuma — the first scoop in an ongoing saga. Ngobeni and Sole, both members of the M&G investigations unit, will go head-to-head with other regional winners in the finals, the ceremony for which will take place in Midrand in November.
“The recent awards received by Mail & Guardian writers and designers show that the newspaper has established itself as the leading interrogator of South African political, social and economic life in this country,” said M&G editor Mondli Makhanya.
Meanwhile, the readership of the Mail & Guardian Online has broken through the key 200 000-reader mark, surpassing previous records achieved during the Iraq war. The website, the first internet news publication in Africa, notched up more than 234 000 readers for the month of August and almost 1,7-million page impressions.
“The readership has almost doubled in the space of one year,” said M&G Online editor Matthew Buckland.