The Brief: Bayede-Iphepha laboHlanga
The Brief: Product and Design, Content Development and Marketing
A Friday read, Bayede-Iphepha LaboHlanga focuses on educating its readers and creating awareness about active citizenship matters, ethical leadership, political culture, social accountability and the global political economy. With correspondents across all sectors in South Africa and in key cities worldwide, the newspaper also contains an influential opinion section with several revered columnists.
The Idea
Transformation of media as an institution is paramount, not only in terms of ownership at a high level, but value chain development that touches the very end of media consumers like in rural and townships. Importantly to Bayede-Iphepha LaboHlanga brand is to distribute content to communities in vernacular languages that are under served.
The Insight
The publication which was started 8 years ago, in a short period, has made its mark in the news industry through its fearless investigative journalism. In 2018 was nominated for the prestigious Nat Nakasa Award for Media Integrity by the South African Editor’s Forum, a first for a vernacular newspaper.
During that year, the publication was selected by the South African Media Innovation Program (SAMIP) to its multi-year initiative aimed at accelerating digital innovation and sustainability among selected independent media outlets in South Africa.
Since 2020 Igunundu started a campaign to assist Bayede-Iphepha LaboHlanga in transitioning to digital. With an in-house production team, the podcast studio produces content for B2B shows and bespoke branded podcasts for clients, ranging from community radio stations, starts ups to established brands. Igunundu assists the newspaper to create ground-breaking narratives relevant to the direction of the story preferences and narratives that are compelling to targeted audiences.
Under the auspices of this campaign the publication became the first vernacular title to have a podcast studio and podcast programmes. It has produced 100 epidsodes.
