Mail & Guardian

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The Mail & Guardian is a South African weekly newspaper. Initially started as an alternative newspaper by a group of journalists in 1985 after the closures of the two leading liberal newspapers, The Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Express. The paper was originally known as the Weekly Mail, as the paper did not have enough money to publish daily. Weekly Mail was one of the first newspapers to use Apple Mac desktop publishing. The paper was renamed the Weekly Mail & Guardian from 30 July 1993, later shortened to the Mail and Guardian.

The Weekly Mail criticised the government and its Apartheid policies which led to the paper's suspension in 1988 by PW Botha. In 1994 the Mail & Guardian Online was launched in conjunction with the predominantly Afrikaner-owned Media24, becoming the first internet news publication in Africa. The London based Guardian Media Group (GMG), publishers of The Guardian, became the majority shareholder of the print edition in 1995, and the name was changed to Mail & Guardian. GMG sold most of its holding to Zimbabwean Newspaper magnate Trevor Ncube in 2002^[1]. GMG still holds 10% of the company.

The Mail & Guardian newspaper and Mail & Guardian Online website position themselves in the market as South Africa's quality read, aimed at the intelligentsia. The paper has been criticised for being expensive and ignoring its roots in the alternative press.

The editor of the Mail & Guardian newspaper is Ferial Haffajee and the CEO is Trevor Ncube. The paper's website is edited by Riaan Wolmarans and the publisher is Matthew Buckland.

1 Online edition
2 Awards
3 References
4 External link

[edit] Online edition

The Mail & Guardian Online has received numerous accolades and awards, including receiving a Webby honourable mention in 2005 and being voted one of the world's top 175 websites by Forbes.com in 2001.

The site has a monthly readership of around 600 000 unique users and 3-million page impressions, from South Africa and around the world. It is one of South Africa's top five sites, according to Nielsen//Netratings.

The website began its life as the Electronic Mail & Guardian (eM&G), which was initially an e-mail subscription service that allowed readers living outside South Africa's borders to receive Mail & Guardian newspaper stories hours before reaching the newspaper's subscribers. Soon after, the service expanded into a searchable online archive, published in partnership with Sangonet, the country's oldest Internet Service Provider. A World Wide Web site was added, which in turn progressed from producing a weekly mirror of the printed newspaper to generating its own daily news.

Mail & Guardian Online is jointly owned by Internet Service Provider M-Web and publishing company M&G Media. M-Web has been criticised for not making a submission at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on its role under apartheid and is the largest player in the dial-up subscriber market and forms part of the MIH, Multichoice group. M&G Media publishes the Mail & Guardian newspaper and is 87,5% owned by Newtrust Company Botswana Limited, owned by Zimbabwean publisher and entrepreneur Trevor Ncube. The London-based Guardian Newspapers Limited holds 10% of the company and minority shareholders make up the rest.

[edit] Awards

1995 - British IPD Best International Newspaper Award
1996 - Missouri Medal for Distinguished Journalism
2001 - Forbes.com voted the Mail & Guardian Online one of the world's top 175 websites.
2005 - Webby Worthy honourable mention.