Newspapers are no longer profitable, but journalism can still be. Let's get to work on creating the next printing press. Democracy will thank us later, writes Qaanitah Hunter.
I was perched on a ski slope in Lesotho on Sunday when I came across a column from the Naspers and Prosus' chairperson, Koos Bekker explaining the decision to shut down several of the company's iconic newspapers.
It's simple mathematics: publishing newspapers in 2024 is an expensive and futile endeavour. No one is reading physical papers, and big tech has fundamentally upended the media's funding model. I believed this before, but now I am certain: shut them down.
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Before anyone accuses me of being a millennial journalist with no loyalty to "real journalism," let me state my case. Good journalism is not defined by the medium of its distribution. It will outlive the death of the printing press.
Democracy relies on robust, engaged, and trusted media. It has nothing to do with the paper it's printed on. What good are newspapers in promoting accountability when hardly anyone reads them?
Printing newspapers in 2024 is akin to flushing cash down the drain. Bekker laid it out clearly:
Despite excellent reporting, 24 out of every 25 readers of City Press have already stopped buying the printed newspaper and now prefer their news electronically. Such paltry paper sales mean that printing presses now run only briefly at night but still require a full crew; delivery trucks drive around half-empty, burning diesel; many cafes or supermarkets no longer reserve display space for a newspaper if only five copies sell each day. Currently, an annual loss of R12 million is forecast for City Press, with R18 million coming next year.
Despite these staggering losses, industry veterans and media purists insist that shutting down these papers would be "a sad day for journalism". It doesn't have to be. News audiences have long moved beyond printed papers, and the rapid evolution of technology means that even digital news as we know it today is not the future of media.
In time, people won't click on links to read 800-word columns like this one. The accelerated transformation of technology, spurred by generative artificial intelligence, makes current journalism as we know it already redundant.
Formidable research shows South African news audiences consume most of their news and entertainment through vertical video. Think about where you get most of your news from. I don't need to tell you that the days of opening a newspaper at breakfast to get yesterday's news are over.
This is already true for most of you reading this. In 2020, then New York Times CEO Mark Thompson said he would be "very surprised" if there's a print New York Times newspaper in 20 years.
Audiences are no longer blindly loyal
Worse, some media houses have accelerated their own demise by printing stale and self-serving stories. Audiences are no longer mindlessly loyal. They don't have to eat anything you dish out. They will find what they are looking for when they want it and consume it how they want to.
In the last three months, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the sustainability of media and its future. I started this career at age 17 and spent most of my twenties reporting news across platforms. But at the end of April, I signed off from leading News24's politics and opinion teams after a four-year stint. The primary reason for my departure, a month before elections, was persistent burnout and a desire to refresh my skillset.
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However, in these last three months, I have explored various avenues to understand where global media is headed and what artificial intelligence will do to bolster journalism. I believe AI will, and already does, make journalism better. It is not a boogeyman with malicious intent against the traditional newspaperman with his pen behind his ear.
Technology simply evolves. This is why I don't believe in joining the chorus of my peers who shout that the media is dying without doing anything to change things. My heart aches at the thought of looming retrenchments across the industry in South Africa, and I know that one job lost is one too many. But I also know that journalism, as it is done today, will be non-existent in the near future, and we must be ready for it.
So instead of bemoaning the closure of iconic newspapers like City Press, we must look at what comes next. And that's where people like Bekker come in. He and Media24 must invest furiously in the future and in training journalists for tomorrow. A coalition government, as we have in South Africa, needs a probing, alert, and strong media.
Shutting down newspapers must be the genesis of an optimised and effective new media. This crossroads for Media24 must be the beginning of imagining a new world for journalism. It's not the end of the road. Big tech will continue to cannibalise news media as long as we do not invest in tech and become formidable in that space.
We cannot continue to wait until our inevitable demise. Bekker and his peers must bear in mind that without a vibrant media, democracy is as good as dead. Newspapers are no longer profitable, but journalism can still be. Let's get to work on creating the next printing press. Democracy will thank us later.
- Qaanitah Hunter is an award-winning political journalist and author.
* This column was updated on 31/07/2024 to indicate that Koos Bekker is chairperson of Naspers and Prosus and not Media24 as orginally stated. A reference to Die Burger being closed was removed, as this is not the case.
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