The new regional umbrella body incorporates South Africa's 126-year-old Community Press Association (CPA) and the Independent Media Alliance (IMA) lobby group, and has been accepted as a constituent member of the Print Media South Africa (PMSA) cluster of media advocacy associations.
AIPSA, launched on September 18, is intended to represent South Africa's estimated 250 small independent newspapers, and will seek to become the primary clearinghouse for research, policy debate, and the setting of industry standards for the grassroots media sector.
The new Section 21 association will also aggressively lobby on publishers' behalf, and will proactively develop technical training standards, management toolkits and tipsheets, and Open Source software products.
AIPSA will, in addition, commission a comprehensive database-driven web portal to showcase its research and products, as well as to give access to individual publications.
The AIPSA plenary summit also adopted the following IMA projects/programmes:
AIPSA's board of directors will meanwhile immediately begin fund-raising for a proposed permanent secretariat based at PMSA's offices in Johannesburg, as well as for a number of flagship research and member-services projects.
The board consists of: Zaidi Khumalo (Kathorus Mail in Gauteng); Anton van Zyl (Zoutpansberger Newspaper Group in Limpopo); Rishaad Mahomed (Tabloid Newspaper Group in KZN); Justin Arenstein (AENS & Lowveld Living in Mpumalanga); Greg Orsmond (Fever & Herald Newspaper Group in East Cape/KZN); Danie O'Reily (Kitsnuus in North Cape & Free State); and Mansoor Jaffer (Forum of Community Journalists representative).
The new association will initially receive limited financial support from the Newspaper Association of SA (NASA) to cover basic office overheads & PMSA membership expenses, but will be expected to cover its own operational costs.
AIPSA's website will be www.independentpublisher.org.
Information requests, membership applications, suggestions, and any other communication can be directed to either PMSA admin manager Cathy Pestana, on email: or to AIPSA board member Justin Arenstein on email: .
