Online punishing print
It has been predicted for many years now but 2008 saw the start of the real shift away from print media to online media. And in all likelihood the trend will continue in 2009 as online publications grow their readership and print newspapers consolidate to minimise losses.
The most notable events over the past year were the US-based Christian Science Monitor daily announcing it was to stop printing the paper and focus on online specifically. Similarly, tech-stalwart PCMagazine announced it would no longer be producing a print publication anymore. It is a trend that we will redoubtably see more of in the coming year.
In South Africa the trend to online-only publications hasn’t yet taken hold among the major news houses, but there is a growing sense that newspapers as we know it will undergo significant changes in the coming year.
And the most important reason behind this is the sudden downturn in newspaper readership figures, as well as a global financial crisis-inspired dip in advertising revenues.
According to the third quarter 2008 result published by the Audit Bureau of Circulation in November, daily newspapers showed a worrying 2% dip in circulation in the quarter in comparison with the previous year. The two quarters before than saw the industry reach new highs. Even optimists are beginning to accept that the downturn is going to bite into revenues and most major news groups including Independent Newspapers, Media 24 and Naspers are in various stages of retrenchments.
Weekly newspaper circulations declined by 9% reinforcing the trend towards lower circulations.
Online
In comparison, online media is looking healthy – at least in readership figures if not so much in revenues – with strong growth across the board. The statistics provided by the Online Publishers Association, which monitors traffic to South Africa’s websites, shows that there have been very strong increases in the number of South Africans visiting websites over the past 18 months.
Looking at South African-only traffic to South Africa’s most popular websites shows that there has been a 31% increase in monthly unique readers when comparing June 2007 and June 2008. The trend continues in the third quarter of 2008 with a 4% increase in domestic traffic to local websites between July and September 2008.
For print media the writing is on the wall and while many newspapers will survive the turmoil there will by necessity be many changes and consolidations in the print media industry in the coming year as it struggles to find its place in the new online world.
Online versus print – give your views
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