As we commemorate World News Day on 28 September to raise awareness of the important role journalists play in providing trustworthy news for citizens and democracy, we are reminded of the strides we have made to make media a progressive space but also of the state of the news and media in South Africa.
In the last few months, at least two media houses have announced business restructuring and potential job cuts as they try to navigate the challenges in the South African media industry.
The first was Media24 in May 2024 which said it would be closing some of its key print publications including City Press and Daily Sun, and more recently, Daily Maverick announced that it would be embarking on reorganisation and cost reduction strategies. Pretoria News and Weekend Post, owned by Arena Holdings and Independent Media respectively, had also embarked on a cost reduction and restructuring process. The outcomes of all these losses are the same: news and democracy suffer.
Several studies and commentators have said sales in print publications are declining as more people get their news online.
The 2024 Digital News Report showed that South Africa’s media landscape is “subject to a hollowing out of the resources of news organisations, including retrenchments and the closing down of news titles”.
But the issue is not just in South Africa, the study illustrates.
“Our country pages this year are filled with examples of layoffs, closures, and other cuts due to a combination of rising costs, falling advertising revenues, and sharp declines in traffic from social media. In some parts of the world, these economic challenges have made it even harder for news media to resist pressures from powerful business people or governments looking to influence coverage and control narratives.”
According to its findings, the power and changing strategies of rival big tech companies, including social media, search engines, and video platforms are posing a major challenge to the industry.
The solutions for these issues vary, but commenting on Daily Maverick’s recent announcement, the founding CEO Styli Charalambous said “without legislative changes to incentivise and encourage support from philanthropic entities, corporates and the public, the sustainability of journalism will continue to be out of reach.
“An industry that creates so much value for the world shouldn’t be struggling this much. The market context is broken and we urgently need policy reform to fix it. Nothing else can.”
Content Writer