Like many of us, you probably saw the teaser ads in the Zimpapers papers these past two weeks for a product called BH24. On Sunday, the paper finally revealed in a full page ad the introduction of a service providing “daily business updates on your phone, tablet or laptop”. The add encouraged readers to visit the news service’s website on www.bh24.co.zw.
So visit we did. Nothing. Just a domain registered but no site there. We suspect maybe they published the wrong address so we go ahead to Google BH24 Zimbabwe and discover the website is just on online yet. Why Zimpapers encourages readers to visit a website that doesn’t exist yet beats us. But Google did find something; a yet to be launched BH24 website being worked on by a web development company called Infinisys, and it looks like this:
We’re guessing it will go live in the coming days and that there will be no print edition of the property. Launch blunders aside, we’re quite impressed with the move. For a traditional print media house, it’s bold to launch an internet only niche news property. Delivery of news over gadgets is only in its infancy and the media house is wise to march in and start learning the lessons early.
We’re guessing IOS app and Android apps will also be introduced eventually.
Owned by the government, Zimpapers is Zimbabwe’s largest publisher. The company publishes publishes The Herald (a daily), The Chronicle (a regional daily), The Sunday Mail, The Sunday News (both weeklies), H-Metro and B-Metro amoung other niche titles. In addition to print and online version of these titles, Zimpapers also has a daily SMS news service.
Share
Home
10 comments
A business oriented site is actually a pretty good idea. Business
sites often command great revenue from advertisers. And if they can get
the right mix of mainly business, a little bit of news and a little bit
of this n that, they’ll be a great success. To see what I mean you can
see my favourite site businessinsider.com. In just a few years its
become a powerhouse in international business media though I must say
they also syndicate content meaning that they pay to re-write/re-publish
other peoples news which in a way makes them great as you are getting
the best from all possible sources. – oops just read over that and I
sound like a total advert for BI…loool
Why advertise a product that you do not have? That is poor marketing from the company, and it is not surprising because the company seems to publish for itself more than it has to do for people. I am a successful farmer and they decided to stop publishing The New Farmer, and how they gave such a name to a farming magazine you wonder . . .we have ceased to be new farmers because we are earning the company millions in tobacco revenue, but hey Zimpapers does not seem to move with the times! This BH-whatever sounds good, but how different is it going to be from the Herald Business news on their website? I need to know so that i decide whether to spend money on internet bundles or on their app.
In the mean time, Mr Zimpapers, where is http://www.umthunywa.co.zw ?
It is a disservice to have other papers online and yet that one has been missing in action for ages.
From the screen shot is looks all cool…. Go Zimpapers go
thrills and spills in… that spoils it, why not exclude politics altogether.. or at least report on all parties
Does not sound good to advertise a non existent website. We will see when it decides to appear somewhere on the net and hope it will be worth all the effort. I have never really liked their Business news articles, which at times are shallow and just full of “reliable” sources and statements. I hope they change that aspect.
Good idea but this project if I may call it did not have a spot on Project Manager. We cannot allow a product launch to proceed without the necessary check list being carried out. On the other hand there is a chance that because the deadline could not be met one senior person felt the advert had to be in the paper with the site ready or not. I strongly encourage project managers in organisations particularly IT related projects to be assertive and stand their ground when it comes to their projects and deliverables
Still trying to find a business website in Zim that has up to date ZSE information on
The ZSE website itself doesn’t have up to date info? http://www.zse.co.zw
[…] media house has introduced a paywall for its digital content. Prior to the launch of this platform BH24, also a Zimpapers product albeit with a focus on business news, already had a subscription based model for its […]