On Friday March 13, 1981, the first edition of Engineering News, then a fortnightly tabloid newspaper, officially made its debut as a specialist business-to-business publication.

The date itself may have alarmed the more superstitious among us, but the political economy into which the venture was born was arguably even scarier.

The most severe of the economic sanctions to be imposed on South Africa’s repressive apartheid State were still to come, and uncertainty and political instability were intensifying.

It was also a year when the global economy slumped into a recession and the South African business cycle entered a downward trajectory, following one of its strongest upswings since the Second World War.

The year was characterised by a falling gold price and rising interest rates, while the rest of the decade brought into sharp relief the brutality and unsustainability of the apartheid system.

State repression was amplified and enabled by multiple declarations of states of emergency that, besides banning orders, arrests, detentions and State-sponsored murder, also targeted the media, especially the anti-apartheid press.

While not in the direct firing line, Martin Creamer’s Engineering News nevertheless found itself at odds with a government that loathed transparency and sought to repress independent voices, including voices in the media that sought to shine a spotlight on various incentives designed to prop up a network of enterprises linked to apartheid’s military-industrial complex.

Yet independent voices continued to strengthen during the dying days of apartheid and were key to preparing the way for the democratic era.

The period immediately following 1994 proved to be a boon for what then came to be called Creamer Media.

Besides launching Mining Weekly as a new print offering, Creamer Media embraced the journalistic opportunities that opened up with the Internet, introducing a series of online derivatives that now provide real-time, multimedia reportage on industry and mining. The form and content of Creamer Media’s coverage was also broadened to include legislative and political developments through Polity.org.za, while video, audio and webinar components were also added.

As is the case for all media companies, the rise of digital publishing and social media has proved a double-edged sword. Content and advertising have been cannibalised, and survival demands an ongoing reinvention of the business model.

What has not changed on this Friday the 13th of March 2026, forty-five years to the day later, is this publication’s commitment to prioritise factual accuracy and source-based news first, before moving to comment freely; from an informed position.

These are not values that are universally fashionable across the ever-changing media and social media ecosystem, but they are values that founding editor Martin Creamer, who continues to work as publishing editor, has instilled and continues to insist upon (see more on page 58).

Perhaps that is the reason why, no matter how inauspicious Creamer Media’s launch date may have been, it has proved to be more than lucky. We hope that our loyal readers and advertisers will continue to agree!