Daily Maverick’s holding company has secured R12m in financing through private investments for a minority stake in the business. The media group will use the funds to support the influential Daily Maverick editorial team as well as its spin-off businesses and operations in content production, eventing and digital advertising.
CEO and publisher, Styli Charalambous, “This round of funding shows the support for a digital media organisation that has been slugging it out in a tough space for 7 years whilst succeeding in building a formidable brand. We are determined to become the most influential political analysis shop in the country whilst the noose on traditional media tightens.”
“Our efforts in the eventing space are growing markedly with new additions to the annual flagship ‘The Gathering’ planned, whilst our content production arm Chronicle has also landed some large multi-media contracts in only in its first year of operations” he added.
The investment comes at a time when the Daily Maverick site broke through 1,2m unique browsers in August off the back of impressive local elections coverage, more than double the monthly average for 2015. Despite limitations in newsroom size, Daily Maverick also registered the highest score in the recently published Media Diversity Index.
Charalambous, however, still expects tough times ahead for news publishers. “The industry is facing an era of turmoil across the board, and the winners will be the those with the ability to run lean whilst still producing great content. In this respect, the editorial team under Branko Brkic has done a phenomenal job to be held in such high regard on limited budgets. Diversifying away from an over-reliance on ad revenues will also be critical for publishers.”
The investment allows Daily Maverick to push ahead with a redesign of the website, bolstering the commercial team and expanding further into complementary content areas like investigations, business and language variations.
The publication celebrates its 7th year of publishing on 30 October 2016.
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