Guardian journalist, Sam Meadows, says local papers’ connection with their communities simply cannot be reproduced by other media sources. “Without a committed local newspaper, criminals would go through the court system without being identified, councils would be able to make decisions on cuts without outside scrutiny and people wouldn’t be able to keep up-to-date with events in their communities,” he writes.
 

Group Editors Operations Director Nicole Rimbault says: “For this reason I have taken the unprecedented and difficult decision to ask for your help. Not only do I appeal to you to please continue buying the weekly paper and to engage with our Facebook pages and websites, I ask every reader who can afford to spare a few rands in these extremely difficult times to contribute to our “Keep our community news alive” fund.”

The personal data we collect will be used to communicate with you.

The personal data we collect will be used to communicate with you.

The personal data we collect will be used to communicate with you.

Dear reader,

Community newspapers across the country, including Group Editors’ six publications, are under immense financial pressure at the moment.

A decade ago Group Editors embraced the digital age with open arms supplying our readers with free hyper-local news online and today, we are the proud owners of various award winning, top-quality, online news platforms.

Nonetheless, the digital era has had a huge impact on advertising revenue.

Now, with the crisis brought on by Covid-19 and the resultant lockdown, print advertising revenue - which has funded our business and allowed us to have our online sites supplying free content to our readers - has expectantly decreased to a critical point.

Group Editors, through our six publications and websites in the Garden Route, Hessequa and Karoo regions, always strive to bring our readers quality hyper-local news reporting about service delivery, road and traffic issues, business news, crime, school news, community issues, local achievements, interesting people, social events and sport. We give you news that can be trusted, making it possible for our readers to differentiate between fake news and the truth. We also drive various fundraisers and community initiatives that make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of people in our communities.

Guardian journalist, Sam Meadows, says local papers’ connection with their communities simply cannot be reproduced by other media sources. “Without a committed local newspaper, criminals would go through the court system without being identified, councils would be able to make decisions on cuts without outside scrutiny and people wouldn’t be able to keep up-to-date with events in their communities,” he writes.

Meadows describes local newspapers as “Vital to democracy”. But this vital service we offer is now under threat.

Due to the detrimental effects of lockdown, we have been forced to adjust the publication format of our individual papers for now and are bringing out one weekly regional printed newspaper with individualised front page stories for our readers to enjoy. The rest of the content is fresh regional news gathered by our teams from across the towns of the district.

Our journalists and online teams work around the clock to ensure our online platforms keep you informed of all the local, national and international news as it unfolds.

Our online platforms are brought to our loyal readership 100% free of charge, and to keep this all-important service to our communities alive, we need revenue from advertisers – online and in print – as well as the support of you, our highly valued readers.

For this reason I have taken the unprecedented and difficult decision to ask for your help. Not only do I appeal to you to please continue buying the weekly paper and to engage with our Facebook pages and websites, I ask every reader who can afford to spare a few rands in these extremely difficult times to contribute to our “Keep our community news alive” fund.

While we have always been instrumental in raising funds for other good causes in the community, in order to be able to continue our news platforms, I am asking you to also please contribute to our own fundraising effort.

All our employees have taken a substantial salary cut to help us through this difficult time, while continuing to do our best under extremely difficult circumstances.
Sifting through the barrage of news, we have answered a flood of questions from readers about the coronavirus and provide our readers with the latest news to enable you to navigate these strange times.
This has been embraced by our readers and is notable as our digital readership has grown by 120% over the last month.

Please help us to keep this valuable service going by donating whatever amount you can spare. Many tiny contributions may add up to enough to ensure that we can continue to bring you news that you can trust.

Group Editors is going to launch initiatives to assist our small business in our communities to continue to market their companies using our highly read platforms; so, while we will assist them, we hope that you, our loyal readers, will support us.

Please know that we will continue to bring you quality news on our various websites free of charge while we ride out this unpredictable wave.


NICOLE RIMBAULT

GROUP EDITORS: OPERATIONS DIRECTOR