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What started off as a small local newspaper outlet in the deep rural areas of Bizana, Eastern Cape has drastically grown and now celebrating a milestone achievement. This local newspaper is not only recognized locally and nationally but internationally.
It is with great pleasure to announce that Pondoland Times has been selected by The Association of Independent Publishers (AIP) amongst the other 10 local newspapers. This initiative is to develop a unique, relevant sustainability plan for the selected publications.
The ten selected community newspapers include:
- Dizindaba (Western Cape)
- Intuthuko (KwaZulu-Natal)
- Likhanyile Group (National)
- MeD8 (National)
- Muslim Views (National)
- Nhluvuko Nthavela (Limpopo)
- Pondoland Times (Eastern Cape)
- The Informer (Eastern Cape)
- ThisAbility (National)
- Xenor (Gauteng)
In the same breath, Pondoland Times with the implementation of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing strategy, the paper recently reached 232 thousand impressions on the online publication for the month of November 2022 and almost a million website impressions in the past 12 months (798K as of 15 December 2022). The growing newspaper has also expanded outside the regions and towns it distributed print copies of the Pondoland Times in Eastern Cape adding Libode, Mthatha, Tsolo, and Qumbu to the map
Founder of Pondoland Times and editor Mr. Quan Dambuza says he’s excited to be part of the AIP initiative for 2022.
I am quite excited for being selected to represent Eastern Cape AIP members in the USA. I look forward to learning and exchanging all that I will learn from the AIP-US study trip with other AIP members on my return. Most importantly, I want to make my team proud. As a sustainability project, I am delighted to be part of this trip. Like most small publishers, I am seeking ways to keep our publications sustainable. – he said.
