Volksblad turns a crucial corner, arrests sales decline

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Bizcommunity.com spoke to Moos about his first 18 eight* months in the job, weathering the recession and his success in arresting the seemingly terminal circulation decline of the daily Afrikaans paper that sells in the Free State and the Northern Cape.

Bizcommunity: You took over the Volksblad editorship in February 2010, which was just as the recession really took hold throughout the world.

Ainsley Moos: Ja, it was at the same time that Media24 had just started a new process of voluntary (retrenchment) packages... The staff was devastated. They couldn't believe the company could do this to them yet again. The previous round of retrenchment had left them without many of their colleagues, with whom they had worked with for literally a number of decades. It was an incredibly difficult time for me to face something like this in the first week of starting the new job.

I knew the staff were dissatisfied with how they believed Media24 was treating them and that what I had to do was to make an extra effort to prevent staff from losing faith in Volksblad and, in particular, in me as an editor because then you have huge trouble, if there is no trust between the editor and the staff.

Biz: So what did you do?

Moos: I think possibly it was a defining moment though it wasn't a scene you see in the movies with high emotion. It all came down to taking charge and reminding the staff constantly in the first few months of a number of things. And that was that the restructuring wasn't done because the company didn't like Volksblad. It was done because we needed to keep the ship sailing.

And I also reminded them of the great history that this newspaper has and the great things it has achieved over the years. It's one of the oldest newspapers in the country.

In particular, I stressed that the readers don't understand how restructuring and recession affects the paper and about plummeting circulation. They want a bloody good newspaper - and we are here to give it to them. That's our duty and that's it.

But this is all a lot easier said than done. The staff didn't know me. I was brand new here [in the Free State]. I was new to the [newspaper] industry again [after five years in magazines; before that Moos was at Beeld]. I was relatively young. I wasn't white. So they were grappling with these things and there was always talk that Volksblad was going to close shop - and that talk had been around for 10 years.

So the staff had every reason to think I was coming here to do that and I said to them: "Look, I'm moving here from Cape Town. I've packed up and I'm bringing someone along with me. There's no way I'd doing that if the plan is to close the paper."

Over the first three or four months, I basically opened all the communications channels. Everyone had access to me. I had what they called a "leadership assimilation" programme, which was facilitated by our HR people, which was basically an opportunity for the staff to ask me anything - literally anything and I have to answer them. There seemed to be a lot of appreciation for that and I appreciated it as it confirmed my initial impression when I first took over that these are good bunch of people - they are solid and there are a lot of genuine people who are loyal to the paper and committed to their work.

Biz: You must have made some changes?

Moos: On a more operational level, the thing is that Volksblad is a small daily newspaper - smaller than the other daily newspapers in Media24 and smaller than most dailies in the country. So you have a small group of staff and still you have to put out a fantastic newspaper every day so there were some issues I had to sort out - more around systems...

Biz: There has been a general decline in circulation.

Moos: Yes, I must tell you - when I first picked up Volksblad about 10 years ago, when I was still studying at Stellenbosch, the circulation was at about 40 000. [It is now close to 27 000, which is up from just above 24 000 in 2006.]

But I must say that Volksblad's decline has been similar to that of other newspapers across the globe. For the past three years or so we've been under 30 000 and that's a serious problem because either you need to do something to stop the bleeding or you have to live with it and make other plans to secure income and the future of the business.

Biz: You seem to have arrested the decline. Last year was a bad year for sales because the recession and this year the 2010 FIFA World Cup depressed newspaper sales because the country went on holiday for six weeks. So 27 000 is a good number, all things considered.

Moos: On the one hand we are very happy with the figures. One of the big issues for a newspaper [like] Volksblad is that the easiest and cheapest thing to do is to replace all the local content with national and international content but then don't be surprised if your circulation plummets by another 10 000 or so.

The interesting challenge that we have is that, while national and international news is important to our readers, we have to make sure that we give them the best local news. And when I say local news I don't mean behaving like a community paper, for instance, only writing about the tannie [auntie] who turned 102.

I mean, when there is a local story, make sure that you write a substantial story, that your sources are there, that your facts are correct. There's still room for some of those "community" stories but we will slowly but surely do less of that but still keep in touch with the community. We have a variety of community titles which cater for those softer type of news stories...

We've seen with some big local stories we've covered this past year that circulation has jumped by 15% on one day. I firmly believe that it is possible not only to arrest the decline but to actually increase circulation to hit the 30 000 mark again over the next three years.

Biz: I think a regional daily paper in this country with a circulation of under 30 000 is worrying. The Witness (in Pietermaritzburg) and The Herald (in Port Elizabeth) have both been at this level for a while.

Moos: That's right. I like to use this example: Why has one of the best publications on the planet, The Economist, grown circulation throughout this recession? It is only because when you buy it, it is consistently a quality read... And the challenge for Volksblad and for most dailies in the country is you can't expect the reader to buy the paper if they cannot see consistent value in it.

Biz: I'm sure that in the Free State you have a skills shortage in the newsroom as young people get poached by papers in bigger cities. And you have to pay more to bring skilled people in from outside and then there are pay disparities...

Moos: Yes, absolutely. I've just brought in a news editor from Cape Town, from Son. It took me about six or seven months to find someone who was suitable and also someone who is willing to be in the Free State, away from the big urban centres.

Biz: Most broadsheet papers in South Africa have made a real effort to grow their black middle-class readers. Is this something you are trying to do?

Moos: Look, the Free State is this really interesting place, as everybody understands Afrikaans but that doesn't mean that everybody reads Afrikaans. Our AMPS figures show that we have a number of black readers, particularly over the weekend when it's up to about 10 or 15%...

But there's no specific goal or plan to grow the black readership. What I'm trying to say is that it's very easy to conflate the issues, that if you are Afrikaans and mostly white, you should now change and become a paper for a broader group. Maybe there is some merit in this but at the heart of it a publication works on markets. We target a specific market and that's it. So before I start shifting content to include a broader group I must first get the basics right, to increase the quality of the content...

We are certainly not a paper that is against doing stories about black people and coloured people and we're not anti-democratic but the fact of the matter is that the people who purchase and read an Afrikaans product are predominantly white. And that's a historic thing that we have to deal with and live with as far as we possibly can.

Biz: It seems to me that you're part of a new breed of young editors at Media24. Is that how you feel?

Moos: Let me say I'm not sure whether that is the thinking: that they want to bring in younger editors across the titles. I value the vote of confidence in me when I applied for this position. I think it could also be that there've been a few changes and now there are new guys on the block and they happen to be younger.

Biz: So what kind of editor do you want to be?

Moos: My philosophy is if you work here, you need to make a contribution and I include myself in this. You cannot sit here, do something and no one is benefitting from it. So I'm quite strict on staff performance and measuring performance and compensation because that's the direction we need to head over the next five years or so - we need to keep the people who work hard; they must be looked after and those that sit around and surf the net the whole day should rather do that elsewhere.

The main thing is I want to make sure that I give the readers the best possible newspaper. Obviously, you don't succeed every day, so there is this constant searching for how we can do things better. The kind of culture I'm trying to establish here is [that] you need to add value for the benefit of the readers.

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Corrected at 4.30pm on 6 October 2010.