A new national daily English-language newspaper, ThisDay, will hit the streets of South Africa’s major cities on Tuesday.
With its headquarters in Johannesburg, it is emerging after more than a year of planning and the appointment of some of the key staff as long as six months ago.
In an announcement on Monday, editorial director John Matisonn said South Africans would have a chance to read the work of the ”talented team of journalists who will face the monoliths of the publishing world with a home-made, home-grown African product, produced by Africans for Africans.”
ThisDay is headed by editor Justice Malala — formerly a correspondent of the South African Sunday Times in New York — while it is designed by Irwin Manoim, formerly of the Mail & Guardian.
The paper’s writers include Fred Khumalo, a former editor and columnist, Sandile Dikeni, a former editor of Top of the Times (part of the Cape Times), Zimbabwe-based journalist Peta Thornycroft, former Business Times editor Kevin Davie, features editor Charlotte Bauer, banking editor Heather Formby and parliamentary editor Angela Quintal, formerly head of the South African Press Association parliamentary bureau.
Sports writers include sports editor Vuyo Bavuma, Liam del Carme and Peter Robinson.
It aims to achieve a circulation of 100 000 within the first few months of operation.
The paper will be printed in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth and sold for R3 in news agents and on the streets every Monday to Friday.
Matisonn, a former Independent Broadcasting Authority councillor and political correspondent with Independent Newspapers, said it would offer South African newspaper readers ”a new experience — a quality newspaper, intended to compare with the great newspapers in the world, but with one difference — it was born and bred on the African continent.”
Matisonn marketed the paper — financed by Nigerian interests — as ”an African newspaper of the twenty-first century.”
Malala said in a statement that the South African public had for a long time wanted an intelligent newspaper. ”We see ourselves as part of the opening up of our country, its democratisation and the diversification of its media.” – I-Net Bridge