Adapt or sink - sad reality of traditional newspapers in Zimbabwe

Back in time it was a norm to hear an argument which starts with the words: "It's true, I read it in the newspapers... ".

But today that trend has changed as we normally hear people saying it was on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube or more broadly people can say it was on the internet.

The monopoly by traditional newspapers as one of the biggest sources of news is long gone and events in Zimbabwe points to a newspaper industry on the brink of total collapse. Some newspapers have retrenched, while others are reportedly slashing employees' salaries or reducing the working week as a cost cutting measure. While the collapse or impending collapse of the newspaper industry in Zimbabwe is blamed on the high cost of news print most which is imported from South Africa, the truth is that the industry has failed to adapt to changing times.
 
Newspaper proprietors have underestimated the power of the internet and the coming on board of the social media. And some proprietors have taken acres and acres of space in their newspapers trying to convince readers that their newspapers were in sound financial standing.

More than two decades after the birth of the World Wide Web, it has revolutionised the flow of information the world over. The role of editors as the sole ‘gate keepers' of information  is long gone as anyone anywhere can post any news or anything anytime.

A little bit of history will help in this case. The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them via hyperlinks.

Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, English engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. At CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use "HyperText ... to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will", and publicly introduced the project in December.

The World-Wide Web (W3) was developed to be a pool of human knowledge, and human culture, which would allow collaborators in remote sites to share their ideas and all aspects of a common project.

But then we didn't know that the Web would render many people in the newspaper industry jobless.

But it seems some of the newspaper organisations in Zimbabwe are failing to realise the threat of internet. Some are burying their heads in the sand thinking that the internet tsumani would pass leaving them unaffected. Some newspapers have had their circulation figures plummeting from more than 100 000 copies a day to less than 20 000. In today's world alternative sources of news now lie just a click away, by clicking just a button a reader can get up to date information he or she wants without having to buy a newspapers. There are now bloggers who a few years ago were not available. There are now the social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, and a host of others, which a few years ago were not available.  The monopoly by editors to publish or not is no longer there.

While the internet brings new opportunities, it also means the death of many newspapers. Journalists and other media personnel have lost their jobs as media organisations are scaling down operations against the backdrop of dwindling readership and advertisement revenue. And to cut down costs media organization are now employing multi-skilled journalists. A journalist whose skill is only to gather information is now considered a reliability in some media organisations.

Newspapers want a journalist who can take pictures, write stories, set the pages, upload the story on the web, but pay him or her same salary. Some journalists here in Zimbabwe cannot take pictures, some photographers can only take pictures but cannot even write a caption worse still editing the photos. Would such journalists still be available in our newsrooms, five years from now? The future is very frightening. Jobs will be lost. But the million dollar question is who is going to journalists from losing their jobs?

As journalists there is need to keep up with the fast changing journalism fraternity. Newspapers should come up with new ways to tell a story, some have now come up with the use of videos, audio, slide shows and other multimedia on their online publications. Screaming headlines no longer sell newspapers.

Though this report is a little bit outdated it gives an insight into how newspapers in US were fasting changing in tandem with the internet boom.

According to the Bivings Report by 2007, 92 percent of USA's top 100 papers were now offering video on their websites. This represents a significant jump from 2006, where just 61 percent offered video. In this group, there was a mixture of local, Associated Press, and original content available on newspaper websites.

Thirty-nine papers offered original content, 26 use AP video streams, 13 offer video content from local news outlets, four papers use all three technologies, and 10 papers use a mixture of two different types of video.  The Bivings Report is a source of news, insight, research, analysis and conversation on web-based communications and its increasingly powerful role in the economy, politics and society.

The report also said in US, the number and quality of reporter blogs also improved in 2007. Now, 95 percent of papers offer at least one reporter blog. Ninety-three percent (88 papers) of these blogs allow comments. In 2006, 80 percent of the papers offered blogs, with 83 percent (67 papers) allowing comments.
 
So if the findings of this report are anything to go by local newspapers should push to increase ad-content on their online publications. But to increase the ad-content there is need to be innovative in the packaging of online news. A look at all local news websites shows a lack of innovation and the websites do not appeal to advertisers.

Zimpapers CEO Justin Mutasa was quoted in the media as saying the 20 percent salary cut was still a proposal. "The liquidity crunch has affected our businesses. There is a general decline in business and that affects readership; companies are also not advertising. Buying newspaper is now a luxury. People now have to deal with bread and butter issues first," he said.

But it is time to make news and bread and better issue, not a luxury. People out there are nearly craving, no wonder the shadowy facebook page Baba Jukwa had nearly 500 000 followers.  People followed Baba Jukwa because they thought he was telling them something new and it is high time newspaper start telling people something new.

Whether we like or not, the internet is here to stay, even if we bury our heads in the sand the internet will not pass. We may cut salaries or retrench workers, but that is not the solution. The current situation calls for newspapers to adapt, innovate or they face the same plight with the dinosaurs.