Once upon a media: The slow death of journalism

By Chris Kabwato

Bill Clinton reportedly once advised: “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” His warning was to the powerful and ordinary citizens that newspapers and editors wielded so much power they could either make or break you.

Once upon a time, this was true. The editor of an influential Sunday newspaper could set the agenda for the week through an investigative story or a hard-hitting editorial.

In Zimbabwe, we revered our editors, and their names rolled on our tongues in awe. Willie Dzawanda Musarurwa. Charles Chikerema. Francis Mdlongwa. Geoff Nyarota.

These were our demi-gods.

Journalists lived in fear of the editor and whispers about these immortals abounded at the Quill Club – the hallowed ground for the hounds. It was the time of hard drinking and hard journalism.

The editor tried as much as possible to defend the “Chinese Wall” that separated the business side of the newspaper and the editorial enclave. Editorial independence was jealously and fiercely guarded.

It was the job of other people to attend to advertising sales and circulation. The editor delivered great journalism that the readers wanted. The salespeople and the executives generated the revenue to keep the lights on.

Enter a man called Craig Newmark

In 1999, a man who a few years earlier had started a newsletter to list events in the San Francisco area registered a website called craiglist.

It presaged the phenomenon we call the decoupling of news and advertising. Newmark began to put classifieds – those listings of car sales, odds and ends.

This thing called the World Wide Web which set on the communication infrastructure called the internet, was beginning to change the way people looked for things to buy.

Google – the Grinch that stole Christmas

When Facebook, Google and Twitter (now X) arrived on the scene, there was an acceleration of two phenomena: advertising was linked to search engines, social media and video sharing.

Our news audience developed the habit of consuming content for free. At first, they went on to news websites and then got into the belief that “if the news is important, it will come to me.”

Into that mix, Google raked billions of dollars acting as both referee and player without any production of content. It owned the technology to place advertisements and also owned the biggest search engine where those ads were served.

Behaving like the Grinch that stole Christmas, Google has consistently refused to be transparent about its revenue in the African markets and also what percentage of that revenue is linked to news content. That refusal means that news producers are not getting fair compensation for the relevant generated advertising.

Governments behaving badly

But the media was not just being bullied by Google, Meta and others. In most African markets, the government is the biggest advertiser. In Zimbabwe, where government, ruling party and State are conflated, the advertising cake is eaten by media allied to these entities. It even seems that some government-controlled newspapers are now simply printing just to carry advertising. The national distribution costs for a print run of 2000 copies do not make any sense at all.

Further to this, government and party honchos apply pressure on third parties e.g. state-controlled banks and parastatals not to advertise with media deemed critical of the government and the ruling party.

In Kenya, the Ruto government has declared that electronic advertising by the state and its agencies can only be carried on the platforms of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation.

On the print side, the Kenya government has given an exclusive contract to carry government gazettes and notices to a smaller newspaper. Kenyan activists have not taken this lying down.

The Law Society of Kenya has gone to court to challenge these new policies on the grounds that the starvation of advertising to private media constitutes a violation of access to information. After all, these are public funds and should shared equitably.

Of course, one should not be surprised by the hostility of African governments.

In Zimbabwe, the bombing of the Daily News printing press on 28 January 2001 drew sarcastic comments from that lunatic in self-imposed exile in Kenya when he was Minister of Information. Prior to the attack, he had made threats against both the newspaper and other independent media.

Keeping our heads above water: the media business model experiments
Doing journalism and running a media enterprise now requires a dose of madness.

The brave entrepreneurs who run the platforms that generate stories daily battle against the odds. Many have bet their own money and resources. Idealists to the core, they believe in their calling.

Some have been trying WhatsApp as a primary platform and distributing a PDF newsletter that carries news and advertising.

Others are offering a range of services such as events, training, hiring out of audiovisual equipment, and consultancy.

For others, donor funding has enabled them to report on health, climate change and food security whilst using the same to pay salaries.

Others are trying hard to entice the African Diaspora to pay subscriptions or donate to specific items. They are working on content strategies for the same Diaspora.

What is to be done?
Globally, not all news media organisations are struggling. The Financial Times and the New York Times are thriving but everyone else is under the cosh.

But those struggling in the USA and Europe have access to numerous philanthropic organisations that are assisting them.

For Africa, it is time that our billionaires and high-net-worth individuals come to the party. They have generously given money to the health and education sectors. They should recognise that journalism is a vital public service that requires financial support. The billionaires’ foundations should aid the efforts by the news media to innovate, build leadership, grow audiences, and deploy technologies such as AI. On the other hand, the unthinking African governments should be compelled to allocate the advertising cake fairly. Corporate bullies such as Safaricom in Kenya should be named and shamed for withdrawing advertising from the Nation Media Group platforms due to critical reporting.

There are more things journalists, media owners and activists can do, and I have detailed these in a recent report you can find here.

Meanwhile, hug a journalist when you meet one. They need it.

NewZwire