Mail & Guardian refreshes website

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Says M&G editor, Chris Roper, "Our new site is designed to allow the reader to easily differentiate between original M&G content, and necessary breaking news. We've also made it easier to find those special M&G investigative, political and thought-provoking pieces that can retain readers' interest over a longer period than the usual short time frame of online news publishing.

"We need to make sure that readers have a front page that changes with the 24/7 demands of breaking news, but at the same time allow them to easily find the big, heavyweight pieces that are primarily why they come to the site."

Commenting on the technical side of things, Alistair Fairweather (recently promoted to GM of digital operations at M&G) says: "The thing we're most excited about in terms on tech is using MySQL Cluster. It's a new generation data layer that allows us to have "carrier grade" uptime and scale up or out quickly and (relatively) cheaply."

Communicating the launch

Communications agency Halo was employed by M&G to communicate the launch of the new site based on the proposition "not your average news site". Starting from this morning, 7 May 2012 and running for the entire week until 11 May between 7am and 10am, the new website is displayed on the digital screen opposite Sandton's Gautrain station.

Foot traffic from the station has the opportunity to explore the site on iPads which control and mirror the large screen content. A live twitter feed scrolls along the second screen displaying the hashtag #newMG.

According to the agency, it wanted to show the site in all its glory while allowing users the opportunity to engage with the site on a larger than life platform.

"It's been very cool to give the man on the street the power to control a screen of that size and hopefully we will have a lot more engagement over the next four days. There are understandably some teething issues with the new site but we expect mg.co.za to become the news benchmark in South Africa. It's been a privilege to work with such a passionate team," says a Halo spokesperson.

Starting on 15 May, the campaign will move to radio.

For more, go to www.mg.co.za.

Updated at 1.14pm on 11 May 2012.