About IOL

Independent Online, popularly known as IOL, is one of South Africa’s leading news and information websites bringing millions of readers breaking news and updates on Politics, Current Affairs, Business, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Travel, Sport, Motoring and Technology. IOL also hosts the digital offerings of some of the country's most prominent newspapers including The Star and Pretoria News in Gauteng, The Cape Times and Cape Argus in the Western Cape and The Mercury and Daily News in KwaZulu-Natal as well as national business publications Business Report and Personal Finance.

Where does the news on IOL come from?

Content on IOL is primarily generated by our team of digital journalists. Articles are also curated from various media houses, including Independent Media and the African News Agency.

Which Independent Media brand websites are available on IOL?

IOL hosts the websites of the following Independent Media newspaper titles. Click on the name of the title to visit their website.

Can I find any story that I have seen in an Independent Media newspaper on IOL?

Unfortunately not. IOL does not process all the copy in every newspaper. If you would like to view digital edition replicas of the print newspapers on your computer and/or mobile devices, subscribe to their e-editions here.

Contacting IOL

How can I contact IOL?

You can contact IOL using our feedback form. Please select an appropriate section to help us help you. While we prefer to be contacted via our feedback system if you do need to email us you can contact the editor Riana Howa at [email protected].

For queries relating to IOL Property email [email protected]

How do I contact your advertising department?

To request information on IOL advertising, or to book an advert, please contact Volt.Africa: Ashraff Cassiem - [email protected].

Does IOL have social media accounts?

IOL has a number of social media accounts including separate accounts for individual interest groups. We also have Twitter and Facebook accounts for most of our newspapers.

You can find IOL on Twitter at @IOL, on Facebook and on Instagram. To find other Twitter and Facebook accounts that might be of interest to you, you can look at the specific section on the news site (Motoring or The Star for example) and follow the links from there.

Can I submit an article for publication on IOL?

IOL does not have the budget to pay for freelance articles. But if it is for free you can mail [email protected] and we take a look.

I think something I have seen in a news article on IOL is incorrect, or I am offended by something on the IOL site. Who do I contact?

Please use our feedback form to report your concern. We will address all concerns as quickly as possible.

I have general feedback to give to IOL, or queries about the site, or technical problems. Who do I write to?

For general queries, support queries and technical support please use our feedback form and direct your query to the appropriate division.

My query is about an Independent Media newspaper title. Should I contact IOL?

No. If your query is about one of the newspapers published by the Independent group then please contact the newspaper directly. You will find the contact details here.

Do you have a newsletter? How do I subscribe?

IOL has a number of email newsletters. We send out daily news updates during the week. We also have newsletters covering business, sport, motoring, entertainment, lifestyle, travel as well as technology news. For a list of newsletters and subscription options you can visit our newsletter subscription page.

How do I unsubscribe from your newsletters?

While we hope that you find our newsletters useful and informative, if you do want to unsubscribe from our newsletters you can click on the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the newsletter you want to unsubscribe from. Please let us know why you unsubscribed. It helps us improve our services to readers.

What is RSS?

RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds are free content feeds from your favourite websites including IOL. They contain headlines, a summary or teaser paragraph, and a link to the article on the website. You can use these feeds to browse headlines in a newsreader such as Google Reader or many other RSS readers. To do that you need to set up a reader account and then paste in the address for the specific feed you want to view. Any news updates will automatically be refreshed in your reader account.

You can also use RSS feeds to your website and most popular online publishing platforms have built-in tools to add RSS feeds to your site.

Does IOL have RSS feeds?

Yes, we do. You can find a long list of these on our RSS page.