KOUGA Express and its sister Express publications across the Eastern Cape will feature at a prestige media conference in Washington where the newspaper’s Ge-neral Manager, Tasmia Ismail, will be giving a presentation.
Ismail, who is the general manager of EP Media and Die Burger (Oos-Kaap) is the only person from South Africa selected to speak at the Inma World Congress of News Media, which will be attended by hundreds of key roleplayers in the media industry worldwide from tomorrow until June 5.
In its 88th year, the congress is described as “the indispensable conference for strategists, catalysts, audience-builders, and revenue executives from the leading news media companies”.
Ismail was selected by Media24 CEO, Esmaré Weideman, and Media24’s General Manager of print media, Ishmet Davidson, to speak at the congress.
According to Ismail, the topic of her presentation will be “The Power of Local” and it is based on best practice in the successful launches of EP Media’s free Express newspapers in the Eastern Cape.
“I will also be discussing the challenges that we face in this market and how we address them.
“This audience is also very interested in the financial returns of such expansion and we will talk them through some numbers on print orders, revenue growth and profit growth,” said Ismail.
“The success of our growth really comes from one core element, our people, and this is where I get to brag about EP Media’s cohesive thinking, collaborative contribution and integrated workflow.
Ismail has been with Media24 for 17 years. Her career with the company started in KwaZulu-Natal with distribution company On the Dot in 2001.
After this she relocated to Port Elizabeth where she was appointed at Die Burger (Oos-Kaap) in 2004 as junior sales representative.
By attending the congress she hopes to gain global insights on the ever-changing landscape of print media and to understand the wins and challenges in this space.
“The next phase for news content is digital and I think this is where key learnings lie. I am hoping to bring back the global best practices on digital strategies in the media space. With all this said, I hope to just have an amazing Washington experience,” said Ismail.
