Internet takes on newspapers

Newspapers have co-existed with a variety of competitors for decades including radio, television and magazines but none has raised as much anxiety as the internet.

Some people have already concluded that the fast-growth of blogs, social networks and instant messaging is the beginning of the end of newspapers.

But like any other business, experts say, it is all about the money. Whether the newspapers and other traditional media like TV, radio and magazines survive will depend on how much profit they can generate.

Mr Ian Fernandes, the managing director of Nation Digital Division, says it boils down on how newspapers in Kenya approach the growing use of internet. He says there is need to look at what happened in the developed world when the online media platforms were growing.

Better deals online

“The mistake newspapers in the West made was that as soon as the internet became popular they rushed to put their content to the multiplied number of readers” says Mr Fernandes. “Their assumption was that even if they gave free, they would use this to charge the advertisers five times more and make massive profits, but this did not happen.”

Google came in and offered advertisers a better deal for their money, so newspapers lost out with no adverts and no sales revenue.

However, Mr Fernandes says newspapers in the developing world including countries like China and India will continue to see more growth as literacy levels rise.

Mr Joe Otin, the director of media monitoring division at Synovate, the mainstream media still has a firm grip on business in Kenya even though there is potential threat from the internet.

Regular users who access the internet using mobile phones or computers constitute 17 per cent, with the potential users at 51 per cent.

“These users have the gadgets needed, but they have not yet adapted to its use when they want to access get information” says Mr Otin.

Newspapers make a huge chunk of their money from advertising rather than sales and local advertisers are yet to embrace online advertising.

Even though there has been no research on how much advertisers in Kenya are putting in to internet advertising it is nowhere near levels of the UK where internet spend has surpassed that of the mainstream media.

If local advertisers’ attitude towards online advertising is anything to go by then newspapers may be here for longer than the opponents are predicting.

While new media may offer readers advantages such as speed in delivering news in real time and flexibility when searching for specific information, it will be hard to the mind of long-time newspaper readers.

“Citizen Journalism in form of blogs, wikis, YouTube is growing in Kenya, but for it to survive they have to build on credibility and sustainability. For now people are using the sites to get breaking news but still rely on the newspapers to confirm and get the details,” says Mr Otin.

The information in new media is less accurate and not authenticated the way reporting has traditionally been verified by editors at newspapers and television networks.

A research in the US by Pew Internet & American Life Project, showed that just a third (34 per cent) of bloggers said they see blogging as a form of journalism, the rest (65 per cent) do not. Fifty-six per cent said they spent extra time to verify facts that they include in their posts.

If eventually the newspapers die with no form of structure being put in place for this new media, an informational crisis could be occur. Because while each of these media provides news, newspapers have the reputation to deliver a package of detailed, fact-checked information.

Even when the information is credible enough in other forms of media, Mr Fernandes says there is still a huge number of people who will only read the newspaper when printed. But since the threat is not going anywhere, newspapers are looking to restructure themselves to co-exist with the new media.

“Most of the content in online papers, blogs is the same, it is the delivery which has changed so the old should actually be looking to incorporate the internet as an integral platform,” Mr Otin says.

One such step in the local media has been newspaper websites and e-papers.

This makes blogs and other forms of citizen media just one component of online news; the biggest audience is generated largely by sites owned and operated by local media companies like Nation Media Group (www.nation.co.ke) and the Standard Group.

Since the launch of the Nation’s digital e-paper in January 2009, it has so far recorded 24,000 subscribers, Mr Fernandes says, just a fraction of the Nation newspapers daily sales.

The uptake of the online media will also depend on the accessibility and cost of internet. During the first half of 2009, that is, before the connection to the fibre optic cable, 52 per cent of the subscribers were in diaspora while 48 were residents. But high speed internet lifted local readers to 58 per cent.

Paying for content

“This shows how the cost of accessing the internet and how the local internet speeds play an important role,” says Mr Fernandes. But, he adds, the endurance of newspapers all comes down to an individual, what they want and how they want to get it.

It has been argued that newspapers must go on the web and let people pay for the content through subscription but doubts remain if Kenyans would be willing to pay for it.

“They can buy news only if they are assured of the quality of what they are buying,” says Mr Itin.

For example, publications like The Economist and Financial Times have been able to sell subscriptions since readers know the content cannot be found elsewhere.

Internet may be a threat to the long-term profits and market share of newspapers, but not so much at the moment as it is the younger generation, who neither buy papers nor advertise, that is turning to the new media.

“Eventually,” says Mr Otin, “the newspaper industry will have to build content geared towards specific audiences so as to attract advertisers and stay in business.”

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