Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (1980) Information

Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Ltd also referred to as Zimpapers - is the oldest and largest newspaper publisher and commercial printer in Zimbabwe, having dominated the industry for almost 120 years. The company is the proprietor of Zimbabwe’s leading daily newspapers, The Herald and Chronicle and owns two Sunday newspapers operating in tandem with the dailies, The Sunday Mail and The Sunday News. It also publishes two tabloids - H-Metro (which is a Harare daily) and B-Metro (which is a Bulawayo weekly). The largest Provincial newspaper in Zimbabwe, The Manica Post, a weekly, anchors the Mutare branch. In recent decades Zimpapers launched two newspapers in the two main indigenous languages, Kwayedza, a Shona weekly in Harare, and Umthunywa, an Ndebele weekly in Bulawayo. The company also owns two broadcasting stations, Star FM and Diamond FM (a community station in Mutare), and has ventured into the digital publishing platform with BH24, a prime daily business bulletin targeted at top business executives. It publishes the Zimtravel magazine which covers tourism, the bi-annual Bridal magazine covering the bridal industry. In 2004 Zimpapers and New Era Newspapers of Namibia jointly launched a regional weekly, The Southern Times. Zimpapers is the only publisher and printer operating as a public company, having been floated on March 8 1927 then as the Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company Limited. It changed its name in 1980 when Zimbabwe became independent. The 1927 launch incidentally makes it one of the oldest listings still on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange affording any reader since then the opportunity to buy and trade in the shares of “their newspaper”. Zimpapers has offices in Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare and commercial printing works in Harare and Bulawayo. Gweru hosts a newspaper bureau and commercial office, while journalists are stationed in Chinhoyi, Victoria Falls, Masvingo, and Beitbridge.