Media24 takes a knock

South Africa’s largest media company, Media24, has reported a decline in revenue and earnings for the year ended March 2025.

This follows the discontinuation of most of Media24’s printed newspapers. These included Beeld, Rapport, City Press, Daily Sun, and Soccer Laduma, as well as the digital PDF editions of Volksblad and Die Burger Oos-Kaap.

Parent company Naspers released its financial results on Monday. The global technology giant said it has also divested both its logistics operations, called M24 Logistics and On the Dot.

Media24 realigns media operations

The financial results also stated that the company has realigned its media operations to focus on two digital news brands, News24 and Netwerk24, by closing the digital content hub SNL24, divesting community newspapers and soccer titles, and transitioning the Sunday newspapers Rapport and City Press into digital-only brands, residing at Netwerk24 and News24, respectively.

Naspers stated that Media24 is a leading digital media group in South Africa, with interests in digital news media, magazines, newspapers, book publishing, and television content production.

“It publishes several magazines and two newspapers and reaches 1 million average daily unique browsers, generating 9.7 million average daily pageviews across its digital platforms.”

Media24 declines in revenue

The changes have led to a significant decline in revenue and earnings for Media24.

Revenue declined by 17% from $175 million (R3.199 billion) in 2024 to $141 million (R2.577 billion) in 2025.

“Trading results were eroded by the financial impact of the redesign, as well as an investment in foundation-phase schoolbook submissions to the South African Department of Basic Education,” read the results.

Looking ahead

Naspers said Media24 has established a strong base for AI use, with early outputs, enhanced by launching a GenAI circle, training sessions, and editorial workshops, which are focused mainly on back-end operations in its media divisions.

“These ranged from content summaries, translations and transcriptions to creating audiobooks, copy-editing, the creation of visuals, launching the contextual targeting tool Match24 for advertisers, and incorporating an AI-driven ‘story sentiment’ tracker to enhance brand-safe advertising, all under close human supervision.

“Looking forward to the financial year 2026, we remain committed to the valuable role we play in our society and democracy at large, while building a sustainable future for Media24 as a profitable digital media business focused on content production for news, television and books.”

Issued on The Citizen (South Africa) by  Tshehla Cornelius Koteli | https://www.citizen.co.za/business/media24-takes-a-knock/