Media

Business Maverick, Media

The Next Generation of a dream: iMaverick

The Next Generation of a dream: iMaverick

Sitting on a plane from Addis Ababa to Johannesburg can be a tedious trip. Sometime late last year, a merciful friend from 24.com handed me his iPad to “play with and kill some time”. I still remember the feeling of being hit by a train as I realised just what a powerful media platform Apple had created. And so, out of one six-hour journey started another much longer one, and, as of today, we want to share it with you. By BRANKO BRKIC.

Many months have flown by since that fateful flight. We spent them researching, preparing, honing, improving, designing. Many nights passed unnoticed, many extra-strong cappuccinos were consumed, many more great ideas were born. Today, we present to you our new flagship, iMaverick.

For years now, the global news media has been in a genuine crisis of identity, unable properly to shake off the legacy of its paper-laden past and even less able to face the future in which just about anyone can be a publisher. As a result, we live amid a cacophony of voices, where it is sometimes rather difficult to see the truth through an increasingly glacially-paced haze of print on one side and the search-engine on the other.

In a world in such turmoil, the emergence of the computer tablet as a platform suddenly promises to solve a vast numbers of problems. Here is a device that successfully marries the beauty and cohesion of print with the immediacy and connectedness of online, made to come alive through full use of multimedia. All of it on the perfect screen, where photographs outshine anything that printed glossy magazines could ever offer.

But there is an another wonderful possibility that tablets like the iPad forcefully bring: the hope that a good media brand, a daily newspaper, magazine, journal, can live again. Because, make no mistake, nothing can replace the work of a really good editorial team in bringing you a comprehensive, well-considered and thoroughly researched publication that can make more sense of the world. A publication you can trust, a publication you know is an independent, high-quality companion to your day.

iMaverick is our response to that challenge.

It will work very much like this:

7:30 in the morning. Where are you now? Your office, your breakfast table, your bed? Time for your news fix. You pick up your iPad, press the button, and the world comes alive.

iMaverick is with you.

A fully-featured daily newspaper. Latest overnight news. Magazine-quality articles on the events that happened in the last 24 hours. In full colour, everything you need to know about South African and global business, politics, life, sport, arts, lifestyle. The most thoughtful, most eloquent opinionistas in the country. All there, in one must-read daily newspaper.

Suddenly, the morning read is a pleasure. Because you have the full and complete right to enjoy your South African newspaper experience. We’ll tell you clearly what happened, why it happened and where we stand. Because we know that you’re investing your most precious resource, your time. And if you enjoyed Daily Maverick so far, you know precisely what we’re talking about. You know we make what you read sing.

Yes, we don’t print newspapers anymore. But we’re saving them by killing the paper. And then we make it much better by connecting your newspaper to the world. Instantly and effortlessly.

What will the relationship be between iMaverick and Daily Maverick? While Daily Maverick is and will remain a great read, iMaverick will be a MUST read. Daily Maverick will continue pretty much in an unchanged form, and even experience some growth in number of published stories; expect iMaverick to offer at least five times more stories than Daily Maverick.

As you would expect with dreamers and people that simply have to create, iMaverick is only the beginning of a dream. Our three-year plan is to create an entire galaxy of publications utilising the same tablet platform, a galaxy that will bring our subscribers a weekly lifestyle magazine and four monthly magazines; all of them, as you probably learnt to expect from us, will be of the highest standard.

iMaverick is coming 15 August. We can’t wait either. DM


iMaverick: Not For Puppets

Gallery

Please peer review 3 community comments before your comment can be posted

We would like our readers to start paying for Daily Maverick...

…but we are not going to force you to. Over 10 million users come to us each month for the news. We have not put it behind a paywall because the truth should not be a luxury.

Instead we ask our readers who can afford to contribute, even a small amount each month, to do so.

If you appreciate it and want to see us keep going then please consider contributing whatever you can.

Support Daily Maverick→
Payment options

Every seed of hope will one day sprout.

South African citizens throughout the country are standing up for our human rights. Stay informed, connected and inspired by our weekly FREE Maverick Citizen newsletter.