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Daily Maverick goes to print

NEWSFLASH! The pilot edition of DM168 will be available from 8am on Saturday 29 August at these Pick n Pay stores in Cape Town and Johannesburg:

Cape Town

  • Plumstead
  • Fish Hoek
  • Durbanville
  • Gardens
  • Sunningdale
  • Constantia
  • Plattekloof
  • Longbeach Mall
  • Pinelands
  • Montclare Place, Claremont

Johannesburg

  • Bedfordview
  • On Nicol
  • Benmore
  • Hyper Norwood
  • Lonehill
  • Mini Market Columbine, Mondeor
  • Summerfields, Boskruin
  • Hyde Park
  • Express Soweto Highway
  • Darras Centre, Kensington

The news that Daily Maverick is launching a weekly print edition sounds like madness to some; it feels like it has been a long time coming to others.

News junkies, including the team at Call Off The Search, have been watching the Maverick’s star rising online as the old guard in the print world seemed to be stumbling listlessly towards their graves. A print edition of the best journalism in South Africa sounds like the most extraordinary treat.

In an editorial announcing that ‘Daily Maverick 168’ was finally on the runway, the team at Maverick describes the early public response to the idea of a print edition as shock and some name-calling even.

Apparently some nut-job called them “madder than a bag of snakes”, which had us scratching our heads. Surely a bag of snakes is very cross indeed. Maybe they meant mad as a box of frogs but … whatever … we know what those Mad Hatters are trying to tell us.

The launch of DM168 (the 168 refers to the number of hours in a week) is very good news for the news reading public and, as any journalist will tell you, anything that is good news for the news reading public is good news for human health and happiness, civilisation itself.

The paper will be available every week from Saturday at Pick n Pay supermarkets. Vote for the store nearest you to be included here https://168.dailymaverick.co.za/.

In keeping with Maverick’s policy on keeping news free, you can pick up a copy in store for free (as long as you don’t mind Big Brother knowing that you are interested in left-leaning, intellectually inspired news) by swiping your Smart Shopper card at the till.

Expect some interesting data to come out of the the Smart Shopper programme once Daily Maverick is added to certain baskets. The nerds, axe-murderers and knitting enthusiasts in the data analysis team at the grocer’s membership club might be surprised to see how many of the Bohemian/hipster/intellectual Maverick readers like a sneaky cup of instant coffee, the odd battery hen and maybe even frozen peas.

It is a great coup for Pick n Pay and a clever distribution model. We can only hope that some clever person will quickly work out how we can get it delivered at home … with some freshly baked croissants perhaps.

Here is a little of the backstory from the Maverick announcement:

“The kernel of this expedition took shape more than five years ago when Daily Maverick was battling to survive. That period was the nadir of our struggle era.

“Even in those dark times, we could see how the immediacy of digital was taking control of our dopamine receptors by jabbing us with an intravenous drip of news with high-sugar and low nutrition, coupled with an endless feed of tweets and twak.

“The role of newspapers in our information diet was changing, and we knew that it would evolve into greater demand for the kind of long-form quality journalism that we had bet the house on.

“Fast-forward half a decade and Daily Maverick did more than survive.

“When Lady Luck and perseverance combined to make it possible, Daily Maverick did what few media organisations around the world were able to: we grew.

“Thanks in part to our hybrid revenue model of philanthropic support, commercial efforts and our incredible membership programme, our newsroom and entire team doubled in the last 24 months – laying down the final pieces of runway for take-off.”

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Andy
Andy
28th August 2020 9:43 pm

I’ll be at PnP in Gardens at 7:59am in line as if waiting to get tickets to a Madonna concert. Love the DM!

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