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The silence of the SA media owners

23 Jun 2011

There's a voice missing in the current debate over government advertising spend - the newspaper owners' old boys' club, Print Media South Africa. Representing more than 700 titles, including the Big Four major publishers, it's the Big Kahuna of the media landscape. It is, to be frank, the real media cartel for which Jimmy Manyi has been searching.

The PMSA's objectives are "to represent, promote, express, interact and intervene in all matters concerning the collective industry and matters of common interest to members."

Can one assume this includes "representing, expressing, interacting or intervening" on what GCIS has been saying about rewarding positive editorial coverage with positive advertising investment, given the potential of these comments on the owners' bottom line? And remember, those owners include Avusa, Independent, News 24 and Caxton.

Not today, thank you.

The owners and managers are keeping their heads down. Instead, it's the editors, who have a string of far-from-insignificant challenges of their own, such as editorial quality, accuracy, training and building confidence in their content, who are "deadlocking" with Manyi and who will meet with government on the deteriorating relationships with government - which, when it's all done and dusted, impact on the bottomline.

Continue reading the full analyis on www.thedailymaverick.co.za.

Source: Daily Maverick

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Chris Vick

About Chris Vick

Chris Vick has spent seven years in the government communications environment. He has never attended a Cabinet meeting, nor has he attended a gathering addressed by Jimmy Manyi. He currently runs Black, a communications consultancy, and is looking forward to writing a regular column on the media and politics for iMaverick, the Daily Maverick's revolutionary new i-newspaper. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisvick3.