media maze
AAn alphabet soup. That’s what the print media industry is becoming. Ownership is changing every day. Shares have changed hands in each of the four major newspaper publishers and they seem to continue to do so as black shareholders buy in. New titles are hitting the news-stands with regularity and new media personalities are being sculpted. This is a short guide.
BBDFM. The company owned jointly by Times Media Limited and the United Kingdom-based Pearson Group. It owns Business Day and Financial Mail, both of which are showing steady circulation growth.
CCaxton. This company, owned by Terry Moolman, merged last year with Perskor in a R3,4-billion deal. It sold off its shares in Rapport and now owns The Citizen. All eyes are on Caxton to see what it is planning to do with The Citizen, whose bland coverage is suprisingly popular, especially among horse- racing enthusiasts. Caxton has cornered the knock-and-drop market but the jury is still out on its ability to run a daily which will go head-to-head with the Sowetan and The Star in Gauteng.
DDynamo Investments. Oscar Dhlomo’s company, which owned 51% of the shares in City Press, has sold its equity stake back to Nasionale Pers.
EElle. With the departure of both its editor, Shona Bagley, and her deputy, Heather Robertson, Elle has appointed Nadine Rubin as its editor. The 27-year-old debuted at Cosmopolitan and has most recently been working in New York.
FFootball. Soccer-mad South Africans are the target readership of the new Times Media Limited title, Sportsday, which will focus on quality soccer coverage. At the same time, the Sunday Times is investing in new soccer writers.
GGovernment Communication and Information System (GCIS). This body has replaced the old South African Communication Service. It will sculpt policy (and possibly legislation) to guide and encourage media diversity.
HHacks. An impolite term for a noble profession, journalists are naming their price in a newspaper war. Speak to any editor – they all bemoan the rapid staff turnover newspapers are suffering.
IIndependent Newspapers. The biggest newspaper publishers on the continent are based in South Africa with head offices in Dublin, Ireland. Owned by Heinz king Tony O’Reilly, the company has 14 titles around the country. It is run by chief executive Ivan Fallon and is regarded as an establishment voice close to the ruling African National Congress. The new owners have started the daily Business Report which is slotted into all the morning titles. There is strong market talk that a daily Sports Report will follow.
JJohnnic. This black-controlled holding company has significant media interests through its shareholding in TML and Omnicor. It is chaired by Cyril Ramaphosa and owned by the National Empowerment Consortium (NEC), a loose grouping of black business interests.
KFred Khumalo. The 32-year-old editor of the Sunday World which launches on Sunday. Hailing from KwaZulu-Natal, Khumalo has said that there is no black-owned, managed and run newspaper which is a force to be reckoned with in South Africa. That is what he’s promising. It will have an initial print run of between 150 00 and 200 000 newspapers.
LLibel. Over the past few years, irate public figures have asked the courts to intervene and punish newspapers for stories they claim are defamatory. Few have won their cases.
MMoolman, Terry. The king of the knock-and-drop empire is about to break into the mainstream industry he has hankered after. Moolman is now co-owner of The Citizen and is still brawling with Independent Newspapers despite a dtente in their relationship. In terms of the peace deal, Moolman has given the nod to Independent Newspapers’s plans for its own knock-and-drops. In turn, Independent has given Moolman a ticket into the big time.
NNasionale Pers. The Afrikaans-owned media concern is one to watch. Under the hand of its new managing director, Koos Bekker, it has invested in its newspapers and matched this with state-of-the-art development of its Internet projects. The group was keen to get into the English market but now seems content to invest in its flagship weekend title, City Press.
New Africa Investments Limited (Nail). This holding company is building up significant media interests. Its media division is headed by former broadcasting executive Zwelakhe Sisulu. With TML, it is the co-owner of two newspapers: The Sowetan and Sunday World.
OTony O’Reilly. The Irish baked bean king turned media magnate is no stranger to these shores. Not content with owning the biggest newspaper publishing business on this continent, he this week announced intentions to base his new online operation in Cape Town, which he sees as being the world’s newest silicon valley.
PPenta Publications. Sold two years ago by Independent Newspapers to businesswoman Pearl Mashabela. The company owns several magazines. The best-known of them are Living Africa, De Kat and Tribute. The editors of each of these titles have quit in the last month, amid talk that there is a cash flow crisis at the company. Electricity has been cut several times (once during the Christmas party) and salaries paid late. But Mashabela says all is well.
SSouth African Press Association. The national wire agency is selling off its radio news division, Network Radio Services, for a rumoured R1,8-million to recoup its huge losses. Network provides news bulletins to both community and commercial radio stations. It is likely to be bought by its managing director, James Lorimer.
TTimes Media Limited. Now controlled by the NEC, this group owns the Sunday Times and has joint holding of The Sowetan and Sunday World. It has diversified and has a growing electronic media arm which produces news for radio current affairs and the daily television programme, Business Tonight.
UUnbundling. While the call to smash the media monopolies was popular in anti- apartheid days, it has proven somewhat more difficult in practice. Faced with rising print costs and shrinking advertising revenue, more media companies are going for economies of scale and they are consequently getting bigger. Black companies like Dynamo and Kagiso have shrugged off their print interests.
VThe virtual newspaper. The jury is still out on how popular the virtual newspaper is. The Daily Me is the name given to a new kind of read where Internet newspapers customise a newspaper for browsers. Its major drawback is that it cannot be read on the toilet.
WBronwyn Wilkinson. On March 15, Wilkinson will become the country’s first female newspaper editor. She takes the helm of the daily Sportsday, itself a coup because there are so few women sports journalists in the country. The newspaper is owned by TML and is aiming for daily sales of 40 000.
XX-rated. Increasingly, South African newspapers are getting racier on the outside and more intelligent on the inside. Major Sunday reads (Sunday Times, City Press and Sunday World) will feature more showbiz and sex. At the same time, to attract wealthier black readers they all feature more economic analysis, personal finance and political coverage further into the paper. City Press had a bare-breasted Page Three girl for a while, but she has now been scrapped.
YYouth. The key to rising newspaper circulation. The Print Media Association has a schools project to encourage a reading culture while most newspapers report that young readers are drawn to sports – largely soccer – coverage and showbiz news.
ZNo snoozing. With new titles being launched and ownership changing, no editor or publisher can be caught napping. The Internet is the new wave in publishing, more immediate than its older print sister and beyond the reach of censors. Most major newspaper companies are investing heavily in the Internet, with classifieds a growing trend.