One of South Africa’s media giants Caxton will launch another community newspaper, The Comaro Chronicle, in Southern Johannesburg on 9 April to better serve the changing demographics of the region. Like the rest of the city, the southern suburbs are expanding while to an extent continuing to embrace the contrasts and paradoxes ubiquitous to the city at large. Caxton’s move will aid in sustaining the vital connections with those moving to the emergent outlying areas of the city centre via the media.

The current community newspaper for the region The Southern Courier will continue to serve the region while the new community paper will ease distribution pressure. Biz-Community reported, “Because of extensive development in the area, it is now too big to be serviced by one local paper.” Gill Randall, joint Managing Director of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB), explains, "It is our policy to always evaluate our footprint, to ensure that we provide relevant newspapers to homogeneous areas within magisterial districts.” The Comaro Chronicle will include locally relevant advertising.

Since 1994, 1.7 million houses have been built in Johannesburg but some have said the city planning paradigms have only perpetuated apartheid planning. Similarly, according to the city website Joburg Connect, the growth in Southern Johannesburg is faced with the common problems of growth ranging from social segregation to blight. Regardless, the city is growing, populations are shifting, and the media needs to be there to respond to the changing needs. Thus, as the city deals with adopting new city planning guidelines, newspapers such as The Southern Courier will play an important role at the local grass roots level.

The new paper will be issued every Wednesday and will start with a print order of 21,000 copies. The older Southern Courier will consequently reduce its print order to 40,100. The Comaro Chronicle will serve a number of communities in Region F of Johannesburg. Randall added “it will become the new mouthpiece for these specific communities.”

To find out more about The Comaro Chronicle and the suburbs it will serve please visit: http://allafrica.com/stories/200803...