One has to wonder what will happen to IOL if the newspapers of the Independent group are sold off separately, which is looking increasingly likely as the Irish parent company, Independent News & Media, has asked Deloitte to be on standby as the administrator in the event that the firm fails to restructure its debt.  Read the story at Accountancy Age.

This is required by Irish insolvency law in case the debt talks fail and one Irish-American news organisation is reporting that sources say the company is unlikely to make the deadline of July 24 (by which time they have to refinance a 200-million euro bond — or probably face bankruptcy). Read the story at Irish Central.

It is unlikely that the SA operation will be snapped up in its entirety as it will come with a hefty price tag and the Competition Commission would be unlikely to approve an existing media player buying the whole shebang.

There will, however, be much interest from Caxton, Media24 and particularly Avusa, which is hemmed in to Gauteng and the Eastern Cape,  in buying some of the Independent newspapers that include The Star, Pretoria News, Cape Times, Cape Argus and Durban’s The Mercury and Daily News. But what will happen to IOL?

The new owner of the Cape Times or The Star, for instance, will want its content feeding its own operation so I presume this will spell the end of IOL, which has shaped up to being a reasonably successful entity and something of a pioneer in SA. I wonder how all the back content will be disentagled from the the IOL archive — maybe the tecchies out there could speculate? 

Personally, as an Internet user I’m not overly keen on these big news portals. Except for News24, which is a handy translation service from the group’s excellent Afrikaans titles, I’m often irriated by IOL as I can’t get a handle on what each newspaper is serving up, on its feel and its character. I would like to dip in and see Joburg through The Star’s eyes, for instance, and Cape Town through The Cape Times’s eyes. Looks I might get my way.

While we’re in Media Land, somethings clearly afoot at Avusa, as suggested by the pledge by the Sunday Times that accompanied the  "Hi there, I’m here to serve you" story by the new public editor, Thabo Leshilo, on Sunday. 

Mention was made "of preparations to merge our print (Sunday and daily newspapers), online and mobile platforms" so we’ll see what comes of that.    

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