ANTON HARBER: Can SA’s news media survive?

There are two schools of thought on the Media24 announcement that the group is moving rapidly away from print and focusing on its online products: the nostalgic and the futurist.

The nostalgic focus on what will be lost with the announcement that Beeld, Daily Sun, Rapport and Soccer Laduma will cease printing soon, three of them moving online only and appearing under the company’s leading online news brands, News24/Nuus24. Beeld will shut shop completely.

While these changes have been put on hold pending Competition Commission rulings on the related sale of media distribution business On the Dot, the decisions are unlikely to be reversed. News24’s long-time competitor, Caxton, has offered to buy the titles, but it is not clear if this is a serious bid or just disruptive intervention, especially since News24 is unlikely to hand over these properties to competitors at a decent price. It will want to focus on converting the last few readers of these print titles into online subscribers.

It has also been reported — but not confirmed — that two of News24’s best-known magazines, Drum and True Love, which have for some time been online only, will disappear too.

The nostalgic are correct that much will be lost with the demise of these print titles. For one thing, many jobs are at risk in an industry that has seen staff numbers drop by about 80% already. These newspapers’ roles in communities, particularly language communities as pillars of identity and common purpose, are not easily replaced online, where English is dominant and content is more fragmentary. Most digital platforms are programmed to promote argument and disagreement rather than social cohesion.

It is notable that the criticism of News24 has been led by Solidarity, an organisation that campaigns for Afrikaans language rights and community resources. “Media24 owes a debt of honour to this community that built this company with few resources ... It would be dishonourable to curtail the Afrikaans news offer so drastically,” it said.

There is no doubt that there is poignant symbolism in this blow to the Afrikaans language coming from Media24’s controlling company, Naspers, which started and operated for many years as a media arm of Afrikaner nationalism.

But with print news readership down about 80% overall, much of this social value has already been lost. Certainly, newspapers’ traditional role as the watchdogs of democracy has largely shifted online. The Gupta exposés, which played a key role in disrupting state capture, was led by three online operations: amaBhungane, Daily Maverick and News24.

Those who expressed shock at News24’s announcement have not been paying attention. Some time back most of the reporters were moved into one central News24 operation, and many of the title editors and their tiny teams have become no more than curators of News24 stories, choosing from the pool what suited their particular readers.

What did not help, though, was the mishandling of the announcement. Media24’s titles are printed by Caxton, so when they had to inform the printers of their plans it was inevitably leaked. The affected staff heard about it first in rival publications, and there appears to have been little preparation for retrenchments or ways to convert readers to the online product. It was a lesson in how not to manage such transitions.

The futurists are best represented by Naspers chair Koos Bekker, who has led the company from a single-language local publisher to a global multimedia giant in the past three decades. As a man who takes pride in embracing new technology — he has done it with the cellphone, satellite TV and the internet — it was typical of him to act early, decisively and ruthlessly. Indeed, it was because he moved early and boldly to build News24 that it is the leading online news source by a long way, claiming more than 100,000 paying subscribers.

In a weekend article in one of the newspapers he is closing, Bekker argued that the change is inevitable and desirable, comparable to the discovery of reusable type. Embrace the change, as there is little to gain from fighting it, was his message.

What he didn’t deal with was the concern about shrinkage of our news industry and the uncertainty of how many voices can survive in digital format. Every traditional publisher is struggling with poor online advertising (mainly because it is being soaked up by the big global platforms, such as Google and Facebook) and with selling online subscriptions. The exceptions are the global brands, such as The New York Times and Financial Times, and dominant market leaders such as News24.

In SA almost every other traditional publisher is in trouble as they watch their revenues and audiences plummet and struggle to convince people to pay for their products online. To a large extent, this is of their own making, having moved slowly and stingily to embrace the new technology, cutting costs rather than investing in the content that would win people over.

It is a sad failure of creativity and strategy. As a result, a more aggressive News24 has been able to scoop up much of the talent in journalism, and the readers who follow them. So the market leader consolidates its position, and most of the others have trouble paying their bills.

For now, our news media industry may be in decline but it is still quite lively. There are still a number of newspapers in at least four of our languages, though we can expect more closures. The existing outlets are not very diverse as they are all clustered in the centre of the political spectrum and most languages have little or no print presence.

The SABC still dominates broadcasting and does it in all languages, though its original content and capacity to meet its public service mandate have shrunk because of the absence of a viable funding model. We have many private radio stations doing news, and three TV news channels in eNCA, Newzroom Afrika and SABC News, which is a lot for a country of our size.

What has shrunk most — and is least noticed — is our local and community media, with many small papers and radio stations falling silent under financial pressure. The big push of the democratic era to grow this sector with some state funding through the Media Development & Diversity Agency is now in reverse.

The number of media outlets therefore disguises that newsrooms have shrunk considerably, with a huge loss of skills and knowledge, local news is covered less and less, and news deserts — where there is little or no coverage — are opening up. What we seldom notice is what used to be covered routinely and is no longer.

On the other hand, the newer, pure online operations that do not carry the baggage of traditional media are more stable and lively and fill some of the gaps. These include Daily Maverick, despite its odd excursion into print with its weekly publication, and stand-alone specialist units such as amaBhungane, Bhekisisa and GroundUp.

Some have diverse sources of revenue, but they are all dependent on foundations and philanthropists who recognise the importance of the work they are doing. This gives them a great deal of scope, as long as their backers’ generosity lasts. Investigative journalism thrives in pockets with strong teams in a number of both the traditional and the new media.

The declining state of the industry has led to calls for a public fund for media sustainability, and national editors’ forum Sanef is discussing setting one up. Daily Maverick CEO Styli Charalambous recently wrote that if news is going to continue to play its critical role, we need regulation, subsidies and incentives — the hand of the state.

There are many forms this can take, and a number of democratic countries where the state has played a positive supportive role, but our own country has a poor record of keeping public media funding at arms’ length — to say the least — so this is a route that will make nervous those who value independence in journalism.

In this atmosphere all eyes are on the Competition Commission’s inquiry into the role of the big tech platforms in our media market, as its recent hearings highlighted the disruption caused by the size and strength of Meta, Google and TikTok. These giants were fingered not just for soaking up the advertising, but for using everyone’s news content without compensation.

If the commission recommends fair compensation and other measures to balance the market, this could be a boost to the industry — but probably not enough on its own to see us through this difficult transition.

• Harber, a former editor and Caxton professor of journalism at Wits University, is executive director of the Campaign for Free Expression.