Leadership Magazine: Where to the Fourth Estate?

My latest Leadership Magazine contribution:

Is there nothing more you enjoy than being the first person to open your morning paper and go through it while you savour a cup of coffee? Or do you prefer to catch the headlines on your favourite radio station as you drive to work. Or do you follow journalists for news updates via Twitter? 

The pace in which we consume information and the immediacy that we demand news is changing the face of journalism. More and more media, especially print media, are feeling the pressure; needing to keep up with this demand for instant information in order to stay relevant.

As part of the global association, ECCO International Communication Network, we at Reputation Matters recently participated in a worldwide study to understand where exactly journalism is heading.

The survey specifically explored the effect that a rapid pace of technology has on media and what journalists believe the future will look like. In total, 1349 media professionals around the globe were surveyed. From South Africa, 200 people within the media space completed the survey. The survey was targeted mainly at editors, freelancers or writers and heads of departments at media outlets. The opinions of additional respondents such as publication owners, content managers, producers, radio hosts, programme managers and social media managers were also included in the study.

It was quite interesting to see that the feedback we received in South Africa matches up to survey answers from across the world: in this globalised economy, the media industry globally faces the same challenges and opportunities.

The study indicates a global challenge; that the changing media landscape contributes toward budget cuts and job insecurity. Daily and weekly newspapers are expected to decline strongly, while tabloids and magazines share a similar fate. Even though there is a decline in print media globally, something quite unique to South Africa is that community papers are still widely read and incredibly powerful. They are not likely to be phased out soon. Despite the constant change, traditional television and radio should remain stable. Eighty-three percent of South African respondents expect a dramatic increase in the use of online platforms (blogs, social media, news portals and Internet broadcast media).

With the resulting decrease in print media sales, media professionals expect revenue to come from online subscriptions and advertising, as well as sponsorship. Respondents showed little confidence in paywalls (pay-per-article), crowdfunding or public funding revenue models. To address the financial issue, some South African media professionals suggested that media houses should diversify their product offering (to support the new digital generation) or generate income streams internationally. Collaboration is a seen as a possible solution where consumers are offered bundled subscriptions to various media outlets.

The advent of social media has changed the media landscape to a great extent because of its immediacy. Anyone using social media becomes a daily ‘news’ reporter. Because of this, publishing houses will need to investigate different business models, even different types of reporting, to adapt to the online market.

When it comes to blogging, we see that most media professionals, both in South Africa and globally agree that turning to blogging is an option. Many already have blogs, but they are not convinced that it would be a viable or sustainable income stream – readers would not want to pay for content when so much is already free online. A big challenge for bloggers is the time it  takes to establish credibility and for one’s blog popularity to grow.

Majority (78.2%) of the South African media professionals indicated that they are concerned about the standard of journalism and dropping levels of credibility. Anyone and everyone becomes an expert “journalist” because of  blogs and social media. One respondent went as far as to say that “the blogspace is crowded with morons.”

Encouragingly, the study shows that the media still value Public Relations (PR) agencies and the news tips and press releases that they offer. Just over half of the South African respondents (61.4%) indicated that the role of PR agencies have become more important over the last five years. This opinion is even more pronounced internationally. With that said, 71% of the respondents indicated that they still rely a lot more on personal contacts and that one-on-one engagement has grown in importance.

Most of the South African respondents contribute to a number of different media channels, they write for both online and print media and branch into radio and television, podcasts, newsletters, social media, blogs and quarterly print editions of online content etc. Some commented that one can no longer view newspapers and magazines as a print medium with online content but rather that it is the other way around.

It is obvious that the online space presents not only challenges to traditional print media, but also great opportunities. The media that adapts the best in terms of its business model and product offering will be the ones that thrive.

To continue the reputation management conversation, join Regine on Twitter @ReputationIsKey or Facebook www.facebook.com/yourreputationmatters.