The Mail & Guardian is a South African weekly newspaper, published by M&G Media in Johannesburg, South Africa. It focuses on political analysis, investigative reporting, Southern African news, local arts, music and popular culture. Previously known as The Weekly Mail, the paper was started in mid-1985 by a group of journalists who had been recently retrenched from the Rand Daily Mail and the Sunday Express, which had both closed down. The paper was run on a shoestring, but made possible by the revolution in “desktop publishing” of the 1980s.