News24 is an English-language

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

n news website created in October 1998 by the multinational media company,

Naspers Naspers Limited (until 1998 Die Nasionale Pers) is a South African multinational internet, technology and multimedia holding company headquartered in Cape Town. The company has interests in online retail, publishing, real estate, and ventu ...

. Its team of approximately 100 journalists, led by editor-in-chief

Adriaan Basson Adriaan Jurgens Basson is a South African journalist who has been the editor-in-chief of News24 since April 2016. Known for his investigative journalism, he was formerly the editor of Netwerk24 and '' Beeld''. Career After matriculati ...

, is based in

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

Pretoria Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria strad ...

Durban Durban ( ; , from meaning "bay, lagoon") is the third-most populous city in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the Provinces of South Africa, province of KwaZulu-Natal. Situated on the east coast of South ...

and

Gqeberha Gqeberha ( , ), formerly named Port Elizabeth, and colloquially referred to as P.E., is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipa ...

. Its brands include Fin24, Sport24, Channel24, Health24, Arts24, Parent24, Wheels24, W24, Ride24 and Business Insider SA. News24 is owned by Media24, a South African media company, with interests in digital media and services, newspapers, magazines, e-commerce, book publishing, print and distribution. In August 2021, News24 launched a digital subscription service that offers premium investigative journalism, opinion, analysis and more to paying subscribers at R109 per month. It reached 100,000 subscribers in February 2024, becoming the largest subscription-led news website in Africa.

History

News24 was launched in October 1998 as part of Naspers' new internet strategy under the company's new managing director at the time, Koos Bekker. According to the APP Annie's

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

report, in 2000 it become the most known South African media of the

Internet 1.0 The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, publi ...

, which was already at that time realized with a

web user interface A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

. News24 enabled third-party websites to create

landing pages In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page", "single property page", "static page", "squeeze page" or a "destination page", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized se ...

for

paid advertisement Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of interest to consumers. It is typically used ...

. Arrie Rossouw was appointed News24's first publisher. News24 focused on breaking local news, while relying on wire copy for international news. Initially based in Johannesburg, News24 relocated to Cape Town in 2001 to form part of the newly created Media24 Digital division under the leadership of Russell Hanly. The move was brought on by the restructuring of Media24's digital operations. Soon the need to restructure arose, and News24's employees were cut from 30 to 18, with Douw Steyn as business manager and Cobus Heyl as editor. In April 2020 News24 launched the first mobile version of the website, a new desktop one, and provided a free subscription option which offered 20 newsletters, personalized traffic alerts, weather forecasts and bookmarked articles.

References

External links

* {{Authority control South African news websites Internet properties established in 1998 1998 establishments in South Africa