The Son sets

The successful flagship editions of Son in the Western and Eastern Cape are unaffected by the closures of the Gauteng and Free State editions, the closure of which was based on a combination of market-related factors.

The company says the closure will allow it to intensify its focus on the very successful Western and Eastern Cape editions of the newspaper. The weekly edition of Son in the Eastern Cape is now one of the biggest publications in the region, while that in the Western Cape is the largest daily in the region and leads the market with an audited average daily sale of 97135 copies for the last quarter of 2007. The company says readers will benefit from the renewed focus on product quality, editorial mix and closer community involvement and advertisers will continue to benefit from rising circulation and greater reach.

The company intends to redeploy as many affected staff as possible in other divisions of the business.