[COMMENT] In the years before the ubiquitous internet and before the Argus Group was taken over by a bunch of asset-stripping Irishmen, the flagship title, The Star, sold around about 160 000 copies every day, rising to 200 000 plus on big news days.
At the same time, The Sunday Times sold 500 000 copies every weekend and could easily have sold another 250 000 were it not for the fact that increasing the print order above 500 000 would have impacted negatively on advertising rates and effectively reduced profitability.
Those were the days. A couple of decades ago.
Today The Sunday Times sells about 250 000 copies a week and its profit is a mere shadow of its former glory.
The Star, which started showing a decline when the Irish began saving costs by getting rid of journalists, showed further rapid declines when it stopped being a newspaper and changed into a publicity publication for Dr Iqbal Survé.
Today The Star sells about 75 000 copies a day, of which a mere 5 000 are subscriptions.
Interestingly, or should I say miraculously, the latest ABC numbers (fourth quarter 2018) shows an increase in sales at The Star of 5.6% or about 4 000 copies.
While this might well create a state of euphoria among the staff, it is highly unlikely that this is a move in the direction of former glory.
The good news for newspapers throughout South Africa right now is that the upcoming elections should boost circulations a bit.
The standard of journalism in South Africa is shocking. And the standard of management of those newspapers with declining sales is equally shocking.
The bad news, however, is that newspaper sales will continue to decline because of the erosion of credibility from poor quality journalism, as well as increasing cover prices and a decline in the number of advertisers from among those still fast asleep marketers who continue to believe that conventional newspaper, magazine and TV advertising still has some sort of value.
Of course, a lot of newspaper managements blame the internet for “stealing” their advertising and readers.
But actually, most newspapers shot themselves squarely in the foot by countering the online threat by putting their own content online for free. An act of such utter stupidity and an indication of why newspapers continue to struggle. Most newspaper owners still live in complete denial and keep applying an old fashioned and obsolete business model in the hope that circulations will return to their former heady heights.
They won’t. Because when newspapers such as The Star and, other great Argus Group titles were riding high, they employed large numbers of qualified journalists who created credible content.
Right now, many of today’s journalists aren’t even able to string a coherent sentence together with the result that newspapers have to employ a completely new breed of editorial staff called ‘rewriters’ to convert the garbage they get from so-called reporters into understandable English. The insistence that prospective journalists have university degrees is also preposterous. Journalism is a skill which you either have or you don’t. A university degree certainly does not guarantee that skill.
And on top of that, newspapers have forgotten all about simply reporting both sides of a story and have resorted rather to allowing reporters to express opinions and bias.
The standard of journalism in South Africa is shocking. And the standard of management of those newspapers with declining sales is equally shocking.
Chris Moerdyk (@chrismoerdyk ) is a marketing analyst and advisor and owner of Moerdyk Marketing with many years of experience in marketing and the media as well as serving as non-executive director and chairman of companies.
