Trash or popular journalism? The case of South Africa’s Daily Sun

Abstract

This article examines the rise of tabloids in South Africa, using the Daily Sun as the paradigmatic example in our attempt to account for their popularity. We first locate the tabloid as a commercial response to the post-1994 creation of black working-class South Africans as citizens and a new reading public.We then problematize the ‘definition’ of tabloid journalism, pointing to it as a hybrid bundle of texts which exist along a continuum ranging from ‘trash’ to ‘service journalism’. Within this context we locate the Daily Sun as closer to the tabloid-service journalism side of the continuum. Then we examine their popularity using understandings based on a notion of communication as ritual; the way in which print texts help constitute an imagined national community (which in this case is a populist one); and the use of a melodramatic aesthetic to draw in audiences. The article thus argues for a more nuanced understanding of South African tabloids at this moment in our history.