The Sunday Times, South Africa’s biggest weekend paper, will be introducing a Zulu edition, Business Day reported on Tuesday.
Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley said that the 32-page Zulu edition, to be launched this Sunday, would carry the best of the Sunday Times national news section, sport, opinion, business and lifestyle copy, as well as KwaZulu-Natal provincial politics, municipal news, celebrity news and sport. It will sell for R8.
The careers section and the television guide would be in English because they would be difficult to translate, Hartley said.
The decision to produce a Zulu edition was motivated by great reader interest and research conducted by the Sunday Times.
“At a certain point with English language newspapers you reach a ceiling when it comes to readership,” he said. “Zulu language publications are growing phenomenally, so it made commercial sense to move into that market.”
Former Sunday Times editor and now Avusa Media editor-in-chief Mondli Makhanya will oversee the project until the new editor takes up his post in January.
Makhanya said the project indicated Avusa’s confidence in the future of newspapers.
Hartley said an operation had been set up in the Sunday Times‘s KwaZulu-Natal bureau dedicated to serving the Zulu edition. It will be distributed throughout KwaZulu-Natal with an initial print run of 10 000. — Sapa