The price goes up to R8.50 but the size of the paper increases and two crucial sections receive a much overdue boost.
Economy & Business is now a stand alone feature that covers these topics in depth rather than relegating them to side issues that simply make up space.
A serious acquisition for M&G is Ferial Haffajee from the Financial Mail. Coverage of the economic effects of political events is going to be more serious and insightful with coverage of the effects from Iraq in the current issue.
The sports section has increased to 24 pages (whether this will remain constant is a moot point) and this at last means that there is space for cricket and chess and motor racing as well as golf.
Before the reader starts thinking that this is simply a PR piece I have some major issues that I think should have been dealt with by management.
Firstly the games section is woefully inadequate without a chess column. It has been quite some time since a local paper has carried a regular column and yet the interest amongst a cross section of the buying public is immense.
Secondly there is an almost total disregard for anything relating to technology that immediately sidelines a major portion of readership. Technology and technical fields are not just for the IT professional as everybody uses a computer, mobile phone, watches DVDs and listens to music.
If it is a matter of space than at least 4 pages could be taken away from sport and utilised for the purpose of following current trends and fads in technology.
This would be no loss to sport as going from 2 pages to 24 is going from one extreme to another and is similar to force feeding caviar to a hunger striker that hasn't eaten in years.
My last gripe is the lack of environmental coverage and discussion of these critical issues. The letters pages sometimes take up the slack but there really could be more articles and features.
These gripes won't prevent me from buying the paper but would enable me to get closer to a total media fix from one publication.
