Business Day: Why every story is your business

Business Day has launched a smart marketing campaign to show there are true sides to every story - and we make all of them your business. Scroll through a few of our new ads above, then read more about the reasoning behind the campaign below.

A message from the editor

Dear Reader,

Every story is your business.

That is the motto that has driven Business Day since the first print edition was published in May 1985. SA was a different country then. A few months later, the government — then led by PW Botha — declared a state of emergency. With hindsight, it is widely accepted that as far as the system of apartheid was concerned, that was the beginning of the end.

Almost five years would pass before Botha’s successor, FW de Klerk, released Nelson Mandela from prison and paved the way for the negotiated settlement that brought about the country’s enduring, if imperfect, non-racial democracy.

In those turbulent years, businesses might have known what was about to end, but what was coming was still unclear. Business Day was there from day one to make sense of it all. Whether one was a retail investor worried about one's savings and future pension, or a huge corporation making multibillion-rand investment decisions that would not pay off for decades, Business Day was there to inform and educate, committed to the values of transparency and balance in presenting the news.

In 35 years, much has changed and SA is a different country. Many of our readers born around the same time as Business Day won’t know there was ever a place called the PWV (Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging), and they may find it hard to believe that we had to carry identity documents that classified us by race. They might even find it hard to imagine a world without the internet or cellular phones.

Those who were born after 1994 might struggle with the idea that there was once a time when one had to wait a whole week to find out what would happen in the next episode of one's favourite television programme.

But some things never change. If anything, the world is even more complex, a factor not helped by the proliferation of sources of “information” — some of which seek to pass as news.

While in theory we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, it is likely we’re less informed than 35 years ago. That’s why trustworthy sources of news are more important than ever.

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated that. Without credible and reliable journalism, who would challenge the distortions and outright lies about the source of the disease, potential cures, and the conspiracy theories about vaccines, Bill Gates and 5G technology?

That’s what we are here for: as you make important decisions about where to invest and how to navigate a highly polarised world, you need a voice you can trust. Business Day was built on a commitment to look at SA in a dispassionate manner (the only thing we are passionate about is its success) and help our readers cut through the noise.

We have always strived to make every story your business. Some things will never change.

Lukanyo Mnyanda
Editor: Business Day

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