Every Wednesday, 57 700 Highway Mail newspapers are distributed across the twists and turns of west Durban. From the Barea West, inland to Cowies Hill, and onward to the altitudes of Kloof and Hillcrest. It shares with its readers local, crime and national news, municipal happenings, school activities and sports.
This was according to Corrinne Louw, the editor at the Highway Mail.
At least, this was what business was like for the Highway Mail before the declaration of South Africa’s national lockdown in March 2020, according to Louw.
The Highway Mail logo. PHOTO: Supplied/Highwaymail
Revenue and retrenchments
The 70-year-old Caxton-owned newspaper, like most other print publications, was heavily affected by the Covid-19 lockdown. People, and their businesses, suffered greatly during the lockdown. “The Highway Mail relies [primarily] on advertising as a source of revenue. We cut costs all round. Throughout the Caxton group, there were massive retrenchments,” said Louw.
Because of this, the Highway Mail experienced significant difficulty. Furthermore, the editors in Durban were not the only staff who were affected, according to Dhinesh Harilal, head of distribution at the Highway Mail.
“We were nervous about [our] jobs, as the newspapers rely on advertising for revenue – during the [hard] lockdown, few businesses advertised,” said Harilal.
An online version of the 28 May 2021 edition of the Highway Mail. PHOTO: Supplied/Highwaymail
Switching to online
Adapting is not a foreign experience for the Pinetown-based newspaper. It did so as it continued to publish and distribute during the devastating Durban floods of 1987, which took over 300 lives and left half a million homeless, according to IOL, and the bombing of the local Post Office in 1988, according to their website.
Since July 2019, the newspaper has been publishing electronic versions of their physical paper on their website. When the 2020 lockdown started, the shift in focus to the realm of social media in order to promote their publication proved to be vital, as it was largely responsible for the continuation of the newspaper, according to Louw.
“The pandemic definitely accelerated a digital shift. With people working from home and staying in more, people are consuming news online,” said Mariclair Smit, the digital manager at the Highway Mail.
“It is now, more than ever, becoming important to ensure that we provide the latest, relevant and interesting hyper-local content to our communities,” she added.
Reporting for and with the community
According to Louw, news during the lockdown became repetitively negative. She observed that besides Covid-19-related news, there was a limited amount of news to cover during the 2020 lockdown.
“No events were happening, so there was nothing happening for us to cover. Most of the news was about shops, police stations, et cetera, closing as a result of someone testing positive for Covid,” she said.
A Map showing the Highway Mail’s footprint and distribution layout in west Durban. PHOTO: Supplied/Highwaymail
The Highway Mail is the thread that binds together a caring community, according to its website. Yet, it was the community that came to the newspaper’s aid during the early stages of 2020. The community did their best to ensure that the newspaper continued to provide content that has been ever-present since 1951, according to Louw.
“We would not have been able to do what we do without the community. We source our news from them. Some people went out of their way to assist [during the lockdown],” said Louw.