Deon du Plessis, flamboyant founder and publisher of the biggest newspaper in the country, Daily Sun, has passed away. The 59 year old du Plessis had been suffering from acute bronchitis when he succumbed. He leaves his wife Vanessa, daughter and two grandchildren.
Veteran Avusa editor Charles Mogale is widely credited as the man who really created South Africa’s tabloid newspaper industry in the early 2000s when he took the newly formed Sunday World from a serious broadsheet to the country’s top tabloid read within a couple of years. Under Mogale we saw the rise of the popular Shwashwi character and the vilification of celebrity in general.
What du Plessis did was to remove the celebrity aspect from tabloid but still keeping it basic. He was also the guy who started Nova, an upmarket daily tabloid that only lived for about 6 months. The magic of Daily Sun could not be replicated, except perhaps on Sunday with the Sunday Sun sister paper. Daily sun was once selling over 550 000 copies a day, but has now settled around the 380 000 mark.
He was a flamboyant former journalist who was a serious newsman during the 1970s and 1980s when he worked for Argus, Pretoria News and the Star among others. The idea of an everyman newspaper that would cater for the lowest end of the market really got him excited and he took it to his old buddies at Independent Newspapers (publishers of Isolezwe, Star and Pretoria News). Unfortunately they didn’t see the potential that du Plessis was selling them, and they turned him down. He then approached NASPERS, owners of the likes of DSTV, Beeld, City Press and MWEB. They went ahead with him and eventually made history together.
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