Publisher of the Daily Sun Deon du Plessis is to launch a new South African daily newspaper on Monday, September 19th. To be called Nova, the paper will appear in a ‘compact” shape — the first of its kind in the country — and target Gauteng’s ‘young and aspiring professionals” between the ages of 25 and 40.
According to du Plessis, the new title is the result of socio-economic research conducted into the Daily Sun‘s readership base. ‘People are doing better in the townships and things are moving at a blinding speed, the young guys are leaving. Very few people would want to stay in the townships unless they had to. This has been accelerated over the last three years and our question was ‘would we follow them?’ The answer is ‘no’.”
Du Plessis says Nova — as a ‘cousin” to the Daily Sun — will target the ‘Smiths, van Tonders and Tshabalalas” that have recently moved to Gauteng’s new suburbs. The areas in which the title will be distributed include Centurion and Midrand and the ‘townhouse” suburban developments east and west of Johannesburg, east of Pretoria and west of the concrete highway.
Both du Plessis and Daily Sun general manager Fergus Sampson (who will operate in the same capacity at Nova) maintain that the title targets a generation that embodies a new South African homogeneity, beyond the racial consciousness of its parents. ‘A comment made by our researchers was that if you closed your eyes you wouldn’t know who was speaking,” says Sampson.
Du Plessis says he would be satisfied with a circulation of between 40,000 and 50,000 within the first few months. ‘We learned from the Daily Sun and our partners at Media24, such as Son, that we can extend the pool of people reading newspapers in South Africa. This whole thing of expanding the readership base applies to Nova as well— this market is not reading dailies.
‘If any of the existing dailies had already demarcated theses new suburbs, we wouldn’t be doing this—the point about Waterkloof and the older suburbs is that that’s where mom and dad live, and they’re already reading newspapers.”
Du Plessis asserts that at present this generation is reading ‘magazines and the ‘net”. Consequently, he says, ‘Nova attacks the wall that exists between magazines and newspapers. It will have a very strong magazine element in it.”
Under the guidance of du Plessis, the Daily Sun‘s former chief sub Minette Ferreira (28) will edit the paper. ‘We will kick off with an editorial staff of 30,” she says.
Du Plessis has extended his contract with Media24 as a result of the launch. ‘I had a contract that was due to expire in two years. I will now oversee both Daily Sun and Nova for a three-year period from today.”
From e-Media, the inside scoop on the media industry. Get The Media’s FREE breaking news newsletter, delivered by e-mail. Subscribe by e-mail now