I was concerned in July after reading journalism professor Anton Harber's prophet of doom column wildly claiming that Independent Newspapers was considering shutting down The Sunday Independent and reviving the Sunday Star to challenge the Sunday Times and City Press.
The Sunday Independent, which carries Business Report, was born on the weekend in which South Africa won the rugby World Cup on June 24 1995. As far as I am aware, there is no intention, wish or plan to shut down The Sunday Independent, other than in Harber's mind.
Rugby fan Sir Antony O' Reilly reportedly loves - or loved - The Sunday Independent, but the split this week between Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and former Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho shows, once again, that love affairs do not last forever.
One wonders about Harber's claim in light of Wednesday's news that the South African operations of Independent News & Media, the Irish holding company of O' Reilly, were more profitable this year, thanks to increased advertising and circulation across the group.
The Sunday Independent is a niche publication - some say a hard sell to advertisers - but it is a measure of satisfaction to some that loyal readers fork out R10 to read us every weekend. Any newspaper requires a substantial initial investment, so one cannot assume that an established title is as disposable as an empty can of baked beans.
Competing with mass circulation titles like the Sunday Times or City Press, given their muscle, is a major challenge that few would manage. An exception may be the crass Daily Sun and its sassy sister, the Sunday Sun, which continue to grow fat on a gruesome diet of sex, muti, crime and violence.
The Sunday Independent is in its 13th year, but if it is to make it beyond the teens one hopes the profitability of the group will encourage investment in the title, and journalism. If so, Harber will have to swallow his premature epitaph.
Football boss Jomo Sono, dubbed the Black Prince during his playing days, is ploughing R600 million into a new hotel chain to be known as Sawubona Hotels.
Obviously with an eye on the 2010 soccer World Cup, Sono plans to build six hotels, two each in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and one apiece in Limpopo and North West. The move will entrench meaningful black participation in the upper echelons of the local hospitality industry.
Both on the pitch and off it, Sono has always been on the ball. The latest venture puts him in the running to become one of the country's top hotel bosses. He already owns the Formula1 hotel group and has a stake in the Southern Sun group. Since the original Sun International king, Sol Kerzner, has found paradise islands and casinos to develop elsewhere, Sono is well on his way to becoming the new sun king.
The news that Sentech had pulled out of the race for pay television licences, reportedly to save itself embarrassment because it did not have a viable plan to raise funds and run an adequate broadcasting service, was hardly surprising.
The bid should not have gone as far as it did. The state-owned signal distributor should have been made aware of its priorities by none other than Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, the minister of communications, who had instead endorsed the joint bid with the SABC. As political head, Matsepe-Casaburri ought to have shown leadership by ordering Sentech to rather focus on its core responsibility as a signal distributor.
One cannot imagine how Sentech expected to submit a viable bid when it knew it was already out of its depth even in delivering the service it was set up to provide. In its annual report, Sentech moaned about a lack of government funding to do its job, making Matsepe-Casaburri's support all the more mystifying.
In any case, the SABC's Dali Mpofu had got wind of the incompetence of the broadcater's bid partner and ditched it.
Sentech said the pullout was a business decision. If one reads into its earlier plea for more funds to migrate broadcast signals from analogue to digital by 2011, this could only mean that it was unable to fund a pay television dream.
By dabbling in dreams with deadlines fast approaching, the signal distributor seems to have modelled itself on the minister. She is not known for haste in attending to matters demanding urgent attention, which is not an uncommon trait among some of her colleagues.