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ABOUT IOL
 IOL is owned by Independent News and Media, which also owns Independent Newspapers in South Africa. The newspaper group publishes 15 national and regional newspapers, and several Cape-based community newspapers, while IOL operates as a separate company. IOL's mission is to represent the group as a whole online, using a mix of elements from the newspaper titles to bring you the pick of everything that's published in those papers, including their entire classified advertising databases conveniently rolled into one searchable online pool. You can find about more on About IOL, found in the left hand bar on the site. The news on IOL comes from the newpapers of the Independent group in South Africa, and from the news wires. IOL does not generate its own hard news stories. Unfortunately not. IOL does not have the capacity to process all the copy in every newspaper. If you cannot find the news item you are seeking on IOL, you should contact the publication involved. Ask for the library, the syndication department or whether you can obtain a back copy of the paper. Please make clear to the publication that you have already looked on IOL and have been unable to find the article. Click here for a list of phone numbers. 
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TALK to IOL
The general news reports displayed on IOL come from newspapers within the Independent group in South Africa and from local and international news wire services. IOL does not have a hard news reporting staff, such as on a newspaper, and so cannot process general media releases. However, its specialist staff in sections such as Motoring do write their own material and will be happy to receive such releases. Contact details are:
Write to the Editor. Write to feedback. The letters section of IOL has been replaced with an exciting new interactive poll and discussion forum. To vote in our the latest poll and take part in the discussion, click here. Look for our latest poll on IOL's Front Page. Yes. We send out twice-daily news updates during the week and once-daily over weekends. Click here to subscribe. Our sister publication Business Report also has a weekly newsletter. Click here to subscribe. Our motoring site, motoring.co.za, sends out a newsletter three times a week. All available posts on IOL are advertised on the site, in our About IOL section which can be found in the left hand bar on the site. Please check this section, and apply for jobs as they are advertised. Unfortunately not. IOL does not have the budget to pay for news articles or features by writers not on our staff.
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PROBLEMS with the IOL SITE
Independent Online is a very complex site, and needs to be dynamic to present the news as it happens. To cater for this continuous publishing environment, a lot of intelligence is built into the server that serves the news. Since all the news gets served from databases it sometimes causes a bottleneck as queries are processed, especially at peak times of day. We are putting in some load balancing on our servers. We serve about ten million pages a month and this figure is growing all the time. It is possible you are seeing a cached or stored version of the IOL site. Try clicking refresh or reload in your browser window. Clicking while holding down the control key might also help. If you continue to experience problems, email Feedback, giving us details of your service provider, whether you are using a Mac or a PC, whether you are connecting from work or home and what kind of browser you are using. We can then attempt to diagnose your problem. Why don't you have the date displayed on the site? We do. Hover your mouse over the time in the top left hand corner and you will see the date in a small pop-up window. We apologise for this inconvenience, but are glad to announce that there is a solution for most of our Opera users. The only current solution is for Opera users to change their Opera defaults under: » Change Preferences » Network » Browser Identification and set it to Netscape or Opera. The default setting is IE and this must change in order for these ads to be filtered out from our adserving systems. Please try logging on to www.dotmail.co.za. Unfortunately IOL has discontinued its web-based email service and all users have been migrated to dotmail.co.za as of 20 December 2003.
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SEARCHING
Independent Online has a searchable archive. It is in black and white at the top of the left-hand navigation bar. You can type in a keyword in the blank space there and then click the arrow, or you can click on ADVANCED SEARCH to get advanced search options. Searchable articles date back to June 1999, when IOL began. There is a separate section accessed lower down on the same page which contains the earlier digital archives of the Independent newspapers, going back into 1998. Please note that we cannot edit these stories, or the way in which they appear, as they are not in our database. In the general IOL search, you will see options allowing you to search on either "any" or "all" of your chosen keywords. The default setting is "any" words, meaning you will get all articles that contain any of the words you specified in the body copy or headline. If you want to find stories on Aids drugs, for example, you would choose "all words" to avoid being swamped by all articles about Aids, many of which have nothing to do with drugs, and all articles about drugs, many of which have nothing to do with Aids. Please note that you can search for business stories on the Business Report website. This is a separate database. Yes, you can. At the bottom of the left hand bar there is a menu for Features. Click on More Features to go to a page with a list of previous features carried on the site. Click on any icon or link on the page to access that feature. The picture gallery is a searchable archive of pictures that have been taken by the Independent Group's photographers and used on the IOL site, going back to July 31, 1999. Unfortunately we are only able to store pictures supplied by photo agencies for two weeks, so a search done for a past date might not always give you results. The picture search is found in our News and Sport sections, and can be accessed from the left hand bar in each of those sections. Please note that the search is WEEKLY rather than daily. How to search: First use the drop-down menu to select a section. Put in a date to get all the pictures used on IOL in the week in which that day falls. Or you can type in a keyword to get pictures relating to your requested topic. NOTE that the two searches operate independently: the keyword search can't be refined by using the date. Want more info about a particular image? Click on that photo to see an enlarged version along with a caption and links to related articles
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CONTENT SALES and LINKING
We do have a content syndication model, in which you can pay to receive IOL copy, updated as the news happens, as often as you choose. You can also choose from a variety of feeds - news, sport, entertaiment and many more. Our packages are flexible and our rates competitive. Send an email to Feedback. The first thing to do is ask for permission. IOL invests time and money in producing its content, and so we place a premium on ways in which it is used. Write to Feedback, and remember that we grant permission for free linking only in exceptional cases.
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ADVERTISING
Click here for a full set of details about advertising on IOL , or contact:
It is located in the menu on the left hand of the main IOL page. Or you can click here. The section has a separate Frequently Asked Questions feature. Yes you can. Remember that you are placing an advert in an Independent Newspaper print publication, and your ad will appear online for free. Click here or go to our Classified section (located in the menu on the left) and use the link in the text at the top of the page. For more details, click here to use our special Classified FAQ.
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THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER CONNECTION
Before you fire off your letter, remember that the editors of all Independent publications require a physical address and name. Some publications are prepared to use a nom de plume, and some not.
Here is a list of street and postal addresses, and telephone numbers:
Phone the regional number and ask for the newsdesk of the relevant publication:
IOL is working on an extensive project to bring the group's other publications online. Currently you can access: Yes you can … Just click here or go to our Newspapers section at the bottom of the left hand menu. Use the phone numbers here and ask for the newsdesk of the relevant publication. Use the phone numbers here and ask for the newsdesk of the relevant publication, who will be able to give you the relevant email address. IOL has no reporting staff and cannot investigate complaints or help with queries. However, you can contact the consumer departments of various Independent Newspapers as follows:
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