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Knowledge is POWER
Domination of the newspaper market in SA's early 21st Century townships
brings lots of advantages...
The BIG one resides in the fact that Township Man - and Woman of course - is
the new average South African.
I've belaboured this point before in this here e-zine - but it is of HUGE
importance to everyone...politicians, communicators, service providers and, most
of all for the purposes of this short essay, advertisers.
Step by step, modern township dwellers have become - and are still becoming -
the happy place where the money is.
Collectively, for some years now, townships have been where the biggest
chunk of SA's spending power lies...
That's HUGE, of course, to a whole range of businesses seeking the mass market.
And that's the audience that Daily Sun and Sunday Sun deliver...in big
chunks.
It's also why, editorially, we strain every sinew every day to talk to
township people - nobody else... that principle alone makes our papers VERY
different from anyone else's.
It's the main reason, for instance, why we didn't get terribly excited about the murder of Lolly
Jackson, the strip club king, for instance.
It is certain that our readers - the people we aim for - were not the
unfortunate Lolly's patrons...
There's also the huge opportunity to use our muscle to change things for the
BETTER in our market...
Everyone knows how indifferent most township schools were - and are.
As a result, in our market, knowledge is a truly precious thing.
It's way more than knowledge...for lots of bright people, it's a passport to a
better life.
So we often use our pages to lift the veil on the hows and the
whats and the wheres out there beyond the pot-holed township streets.
Consider this story which we ran this week.
There's a lot of undoubtedly-worthy political stuff spoken about our place on
the wider African continent...
Lots of smart businessmen are making money beyond our borders...
But I bet you the average township dweller would still struggle to place
Mauritania or most other African states accurately on an unmarked map! Our guy
knows he's African alright, but the African continent is as mysterious as the
North Pole.
So, as you can see, on Monday we did our bit again
(click
here >>)
It came complete with a locator map showing exactly where in Africa Rwanda
is placed and who its neighbours are.
For people who didn't know - but who NEED to know because of who they are and
where they live - that's priceless stuff.
Actually, the extraordinary story of how Rwanda is re-inventing itself - turning
from a Francophone to an Anglophone state in fact - is a great story by any
standards.
By township standards it's all the more so...this is part of the world that a
15-year-old in Thokoza - and all the places like Thokoza - will inherit one day.
And unless that kid is very fortunate, he or she is unlikely to learn much about
it at the local school.
So if Daily Sun and Sunday Sun can play even a small role in furthering the
cause of understanding the Mother Continent, then we would have
done our job.
We do this kind of thing often.
We've just finished a series in Sunday Sun about why they call Israel the
Holy Land...
(click
here >>) and
(click
here >>) to see a couple of
the articles.
That had particular legs - as they say - among the God-fearing women who
voraciously read our Sunday offering.
Again, it's all part of pushing forward the frontiers for people who have not really
had much of a chance.
We're absolutely dedicated to the principle that nobody can ever know
enough...
Regards
Deon du Plessis
SunPublisher
about 4 hours ago from SunPublisher, Deon du Plessis
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