THE FUSE

At a time when the dominant conversation about newspapers is decline — closures, retrenchments, falling circulation — launching a new national newspaper in South Africa looks, on paper, like a bad bet. I’d argue the opposite. The National, which put its first print edition on retail shelves on 16 August, deserves to be welcomed not despite the industry’s troubles but because of them. It’s a rare thing right now: a media company willing to spend real money on the belief that journalism still has commercial and civic value.