Letter from the editor
THE DFA was born out of the grandeur days of diamonds and diamond barons - people like Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Barnato. More than 130 years ago there were no fewer than eleven newspapers in Kimberley, the City of Diamonds.
Today there are many survivors of that era visible in Kimberley - but only one newspaper survived, the DFA. The newspaper has grown and evolved with the people of Kimberley over the years – adapting and changing but always attempting to uphold the highest standards of journalism.
Circulation and readership have increased every year since we relaunched the dowdy old lady of the Diamond Fields more than 10 years ago. Every single morning for five days of the week tens of thousands of readers pick up their DFA to find out what is happening in their city or their town.
If the truth were told everybody reads us in Kimberley and we achieve this by being passionate about the city and the Province we serve, by providing top class local stories and pictures about the people who live here.
We give our readers stories from the people about the people. We champion local issues, but most importantly we provide a forum for our readers (and that is almost half of the newspaper reading population of Kimberley any weekday between Monday and Friday) to have their say, to stand up and be counted.
We are not afraid to speak our minds or speak up for the voiceless or the intimidated. We are brash, sometimes impulsive and provocative, but more often than not we are spot on and we never lose sight of our raison d'ętre - the people of Kimberley and the Northern Cape whom we will continue to serve.
We provide an attractive vehicle for our national and local advertisers to present their products and services to the people of our Province. Combined with some top-class supplements and features, the DFA is the medium of choice for local businesses and companies.
Our vision to have our newspaper in every home and office in Kimberley is slowly but surely becoming a reality. Not only do we compete against other newspapers in the area, we also face the challenge of electronic media, the internet and cell phones, head-on.
Therefore it is no wonder that the expression “have you seen the DFA today” is probably the most used on any given day in the City of Diamonds.
Johan du Plessis
Managing Editor, Diamond Fields Advertiser
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