Staff Reporter
JOHANNESBURG – GAUTENG Guardian, the sole provincial newspaper, has seen its readership soar five months into its launch.

Chairman for Gauteng Guardian, John Crowngold, attributed the overwhelming growth to the weekly newspaper’s focus on relevant issues that affected people’s lives.

Gauteng Guardian Editor, Naledi Modise

Gauteng Guardian offers unique reporting skills in Gauteng province and the country at large in the fields of ENTREPRENEURSHIP, INNOVATION and SERVICE DELIVERY.

“The newspaper sales have drastically increased while the online visitors overwhelmingly surpassed the initially projected target on our website,www.gautengguardian.co.za,” said Crowngold.

At launch in January, the online hits were less than 12 000 hits per day. As of Friday, June 10, Gauteng Guardian hits surpassed 100 000.

The highest hits were recorded on Monday when an overwhelming 152 811 were clocked.

“Gauteng Guardian witnessed an increase for hits per day with monthly unique visitors of between 85 000 to 105 000 per month,” said Crowngold.

Online Editor, Gift Ndolwane, expressed delight at the figures.

“It is good to see readers appreciating our work. We appreciate those readers who visit our online publication for breaking news and ever-relevant content,” said Ndolwane.

The hard copy has also increased sales by more than 45 percent since launch.

Gauteng Guardian Editor, Naledi Modise, said the growth had exceeded expectations.

“We never anticipated this dramatic increase,” she said.

“This confirms indeed Gauteng Guardian is the premier weekly publication for Gauteng province. If investors, entrepreneurs, local municipalities and government departments continue to see value in our work, then we will accelerate our focus in reporting issues that our province would always like to see on both online and the hard copy newspaper,” said Modise.

Commenting about the same development, the paper’s Chief Executive Officer, Savious-Parker Kwinika,” said investing in Gauteng’s weekly newspaper was worth it.

“We started this weekly newspaper in January as an experiment to see what exactly readers of Gauteng would like to see in their weekly publication as well as online, but the outcome was massive. The online version became a heat. I’m humbled and humbled by this development,” said Kwinika.

He said Gauteng Guardian’s newspaper media monitoring process would be handed to independent media monitors to verify the forthcoming readership, scheduled to be announced again on September 30.