CAROL PATON: Can new owners of Tiso’s papers help clean up journalism?
Tiso Blackstar has been sold for a hefty sum in a world where content is and will get more valuable
After Tiso Blackstar (owner of Business Day, Financial Mail, Sunday Times and Sowetan) announced on Thursday it would sell its media interests to the Lebashe Investment Group, I asked my esteemed colleague Peter Bruce why he thought Tshepo Mahloele wanted to own a newspaper. “Everybody wants to own a newspaper,” he said.
That is probably not true, but the point is well made: newspapers are about influence and most people in business can do with more rather than less of that. But it is clear that owning a newspaper is no longer the commercial proposition it once was. Not everyone is a Jeff Bezos — he now owns the Washington Post — sitting comfortably at the top of Forbes’s rich list and investing for the good of democracy and humanity...
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