In December the UK Guardian‘s media columnist Roy Greenslade painted a depressing picture of life at one of the world’s most respected financial titles. “The Financial Times has its pink back to the wall,” he wrote. “It has suffered more than most papers from a millennial malaise which has seen its sales slide and its bottom line collapse into the deepest red. In both cases, the bald figures are enough to make any owner and editor weep.”
The good news for the weeping editors and owners at our own financial publications is that they’re in good company. Annual advertising revenue at most of South Africa’s business print brands is equal to what it was five years ago — Business Day is more than R10-million down on 1999/2000 figures, and only the Business Times is significantly up. Copy sales across the board are similarly static, although there’s been a notable drop at Financial Mail, where circulation is 5 000 off a 30 000 average that had held fast for years.
So what’s the problem? Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers blames the global advertising recession and the difficulties caused by 9/11 and the Sars outbreak. These issues are either cyclical or uncontrollable, and the first can easily be applied to the local situation (if not so much the latter). That said, when the storm passes — and it’s already beginning to do so — South Africa’s financial titles may not necessarily be out of the dwang. The trouble with us seems a bit more structural.
In the piece by former Finance Week deputy editor Amanda Vermeulen, there’s the following quote from Patricia Scholtemeyer, chief executive of magazines at Media24: “If you consider that in the United States there is only one weekly financial magazine, Business Week (Forbes and Fortune being fortnightly), then it is quite amazing that in South Africa three weekly financial magazines survive.” That’s not even mentioning the newspapers.
Beyond the vicious internal rivalry, there’s also the competition from financial broadcast and the internet to bear in mind (Graeme Addison speculates as to why so many new business brands have appeared on the airwaves in the last ten years). Further, there’s the growing tendency of financial print’s traditional supporters, the corporates, to place their spend in lifestyle titles.
A possible solution is put forward by Barney Mthombothi, who as Financial Mail‘s new editor intends to make a strong appeal to the emerging black business class. It’s an obvious route and Mthombothi could be the man to pull it off. But they can’t all follow him. The brutal truth is that some old and respected business brands are probably going to die.