Chris Botha, Managing Director of The MediaShop, says 25% of advertising spend is on print, meaning that the medium is still a very attractive. "Despite the reality that its share has declined from 34% to 25% - a lot of money is still spent on print."
In total R7.8bn was spent on newspapers last year which, he says, is still a big number.
Entertainment & Media Outlook: 2014-2018' report states that the South African newspaper industry remains buoyant and diverse showing continued growth with advertising revenue is expected to grow from R8.2m in 2013 to R11bn in 2018, says PwC's 'Entertainment & Media Outlook: 2014-2018' report.
The health of advertising spend is one indicator of the health of the medium. Newspapers are still on the up when it comes to adspend, despite the overall adspend across print media being on average down.
Adspend, on average, across the entire print industry is down by 3.9% over a two-year period with trade magazines bearing the brunt at -13.4%. The exception being is community or local print. According to figures on Adindex, February 2014 to January 2015 adspend on local or community papers is up by 6.8%.
Gill Randall, CEO of SPARK Media, new media sales house which was formed this year by fusing NAB and Habari Media says their papers are still growing in circulation or are stable. "Free newspapers, what we call community newspapers, are still growing. Sold local community papers have dropped by 5.4%, but this is misleading because it reflects the number of papers that have closed down or allowed their ABC verification to lapse last year. The category is still very strong."
The reason their readership is high and adspend is up is because of the content of their publications. "Our papers give readers unique content that cannot be found anywhere else. It is news that is relevant to their lives and the community they reside in. It is the mouthpiece of the community and not available anywhere else."
In contrast to the contraction in the print industry in general, they have been expanding. "We have introduced newspapers into areas where previously there has been no local community newspapers. This includes Soweto and areas of KwaZulu-Natal. This has given us new markets and new readers."
The other success leg of their success is advertising. "The shopping information the local community papers offer a community is relevant to that community and so our product is one of the few media types that people want for both the editorial content and the advertising."
As the frantic search for the "new" newspaper model - and experimenting with various ones - as the old one collapses around them, continues, it seems that local community newspapers have got it right.
Chris Botha of the Media Shop says it is important in any media type to work together. "The advertiser or marketer knows their product best and the newspaper knows their audience best. A media agency such as The Media Shop works to connect the two and the closer they work together the best the end result for both parties."
Therefore, he says it is not because newspapers are battling that the two work together, but rather it is based on the insight that working together will give the best results.
Professor of Journalism and Media Studies and director of the Journalism Programme at the University of the Witwatersrand, Prof Anton Harber of the University of the Witwatersrand's Journalism Department said recently when talking about newspapers that brands and newspapers have a mutual interest in building media that is effective and gets to the right audiences.
In 2008, 5.2 million adults read a newspaper, in 2010 that number was 16.1 million and in 2012 it went up to 17.1 million. Last year the number went up marginally to 17.2 million.
One could also argue that more people are reading newspapers than ever before in South Africa.
However, says Botha, keep in mind that the South African population has grown over that same period. In 2008 the South African population was 31 million. Last year it was 37 million. This means that in 2008, 48.6% of adults in the country were reading a newspaper, as opposed to 45.9% last year.
"Therefore our population is growing faster than our population, so in fact less people in South Africa today are in reading newspapers."
The Outlook Report says that despite print "dominating revenues in the near term, digital will have an impact."
Prof Anton Harber says the curse of our industry is that owners and managers are today more obsessed with everything except great journalism he says.
"Performance and short term profits dominate the agenda and the combination is devastating. But the pressure is substantial. The cutting of resources, people and costs means we are left with very little to offer our audiences in general. And when they turn away then newspapers will have nothing to offer advertisers."
The critical factor in the future of our newspapers is not making the technology or device, but how we get people to value the form of work says Prof Harber. "The best papers worldwide are moving to digital, but they still have great thought-provoking content. For example the Wall Street Journal. Content is king and there is no better investment a media owner can make. The critical factor is that the successful international newspapers have invested in niches that their audiences are willing to pay for."
"Nothing replaces good storytelling and content. It builds trust with audiences and credibility. These are the values of newspapers. We need to remind ourselves of this again as we venture into the new world of mobile delivery."
