Famous writer Dorothy Parker once said you can never be too rich or too thin. But too much of a good thing is not always in everyone’s best interests.
South Africa has what some say is a glut of financial media. Opinion is divided as to whether this is beneficial. Many voices contribute to the debate, and one theory is that competition for the best story spurs journalists to enlighten the citizenry and dig up the dirt on corporate malfeasance.
But others say that the message is not getting through to a wide enough audience, that the advertising pie cannot support the number of products, and that the quality of journalism is eroding because of the lack of training (a result of margin pressures brought on by the competition for revenue).
What, then, are the major products that make up the so-called “glut”? Print players in the category include the daily newspapers Business Day, Business Report, Sake Beeld and Citizen (linked to Moneyweb). Until recently, there was also ThisDay. The weeklies include Business Times, Financial Mail, Finance Week, Finansies & Tegniek, Mail & Guardian and Sake Rapport.
Then there is the radio offering: Moneyweb‘s radio shows on Radio Today and Radio Sonder Grense, Business Day‘s slot on Classic FM, the business shows on Kaya FM and SAfm, and the World at Six, broadcast on 702 and Cape Talk. Moneyweb is the major dedicated internet product, and television includes SABC and e.tv business programming and BDFM’s Summit.
All the above, and a few others, scramble to cover a stock exchange which has nearly halved in size in the last five years in terms of the number of companies listed. The introduction of the Stock Exchange News Service (Sens) has neatly removed a former captive source of financial advertising.
Adding to the woes of financial media, advertisers have become more discerning as to where they place their messages — they are now leaning towards lifestyle titles, inclined to catch their target markets during leisure time.
Differentiation, it seems, is the key issue. Primedia conducted a survey earlier this year called “The Big Switch”, asking listeners a number of questions around programming. Several strong trends emerged, including a request for more business programming. But it’s the view of advertisers that the stations themselves need to find something that separates the good from the also-rans.
As one respondent put it: “Media can play an important role in demystifying financial issues and I am not sure that anyone is really getting this right. Alec Hogg from Moneyweb has probably done this more successfully than anyone else. What is encouraging is the way some consumer magazines are tackling financial matters. This is something to look out for.”
The owners of financial print media are uncomfortably aware of the challenges. Mzimkulu Malunga, managing director of BDFM, says that financial magazines internationally are struggling against the onslaught of lifestyle titles. “Our financial magazines, too, are not talking to a broad enough market. South African society is too polarised to be addressed easily by financial publications, but lifestyle titles reach a bigger market.”
Patricia Scholtemeyer, chief executive of magazines at Media24, seems to agree that there are too many titles in the space. “If you consider that in the United States there is only one weekly financial magazine, Business Week (Forbes & Fortune being fortnightly), then it is quite amazing that in South Africa three weekly financial magazines survive – Finansies & Tegniek, Finance Week and Financial Mail.”
Still, the demise of ThisDay brings up the point raised by Alide Dasnois, editor of Business Report, who echoes many of her peers when she says there can never be an over-supply of media voices. “How can there be too many? If there aren’t enough readers, listeners or viewers, these media won’t survive. If they survive, it is — presumably — because they are needed. No media group will subsidise unprofitable media.”
Dasnois does, however, offer the following qualification: “I do think the different media are not always sufficiently differentiated. Everyone is trying to cash in on a growing ’emerging’ readership, as South Africa is transformed and people who were previously cut off from the mainstream economy become consumers of financial news.
But transformation is happening more slowly than expected, so the readership and advertising cake is not growing as much as one might have thought. This probably just means we must be smarter about what we do and more sensitive to readers’ needs. Too often we all cover the same story in much the same way.”
It’s a point that hints at another heated issue — the quality of journalism and the skills of reporters. “I think the quality of journalism is by and large excellent,” says Scholtemeyer. “There are the odd offerings that are somewhat bland and boring, where journalists do not dig deep enough, but fortunately there are still many of the well-trained journalists around from whom everyone can learn.”
At least one leading journalist thinks the proliferation of offerings has been detrimental. “There has been a decline in standards, a ‘dumbing down’ if you wish, but that’s the price you pay for expansion in the media. Nonetheless, it is an exciting time for business journalists — there are lots of opportunities out there right now.”
A leading analyst says the quality of journalism is especially lacking amongst the new entrants, and a major advertiser says emphatically: “[Standards] have definitely declined. If this is a result of media owners cutting back on training, then the decision is really short-sighted. Poor quality journalism is definitely not the way to attract advertising.”
Of course there’s also the uneasy relationship between advertising and editorial to consider, which has created much tension in the media in general. As in other sectors, financial journalists have become heavily reliant on freebies to generate stories. While most newsrooms claim to have strict rules about accepting “trips” from corporates or advertisers, the only organisation that has a clear-cut policy is wire service Bloomberg.
Chris Vick, director of Spin Media, an advocacy consultancy, says the pursuit of the bottom line definitely takes precedence over the pursuit of quality in some newspaper boardrooms. Dasnois agrees, saying editors are expected to worry about new sources of advertising and products, instead of focusing on quality copy and breaking stories. “Editors get good marks for meeting budgets rather than for breaking stories. Of course this has an effect on quality.”
Vick, who in another life worked for the Government Communication and Information System, says training remains central to the survival and growth of the media. “The South African National Editors Forum made a lot of noise a couple of years ago about a skills audit and training interventions, but I’m not aware of any significant interventions since then.
“The corporate sector also has a role to play. It’s in their interests to educate journalists, and they should invest in this. It’s not just about a skills shortage, though. The blurring line between editorial and advertising and the tendency for journalists to work on advertising supplements is becoming odious, and needs to be addressed as part of a broader debate around ethics and value systems.”
For his part, Malunga is not as convinced about business taking on the role of training. “It’s a shame, in a way, that they are doing it. It is an indictment on us. Our industry should be asking why reporters who have graduated from journalism institutions need to be retrained.
It’s okay as long as there is no motive behind it, but it concerns me when non-media people are training media people, and when they recognise the inadequacy of our journalists. Many people believe that government is the biggest threat to press freedom, but in my mind it is the advertisers who are our main concern.”
So what do the “real” training institutions have to say? Professor Guy Berger, Head of the School of Journalism at Rhodes University, says competition between the media ought to be spurring investment in investigative journalism, and it is a matter of time before media companies start realising this. “That will require them, however, to go further than training, which anyway is not a cost problem as such, given that they can reclaim from the MAPPP SETA. It will mean giving journalists sufficient time to build the contacts, source the materials, and sift the data.
“At present, journalists’ turnaround time is too tight for them to do justice to stories that have so much more potential. Skills are needed — like the ability to understand money laundering and banking for example, and competence to work with a database of statistics, track international linkages, etc. But without time to use these, there will be no investigative journalism. The problem lies with business journalists themselves. Too many have taken a narrow view of their own mission.”
Malunga and a few others believe that the future lies in moving away from generic type products and towards more niched offerings. Vick says the likely survivors will manage to maintain the interest of their existing readers, while also capturing the imagination of people who were previously unable to access the mainstream economy and the mainstream business press.
“That’s not easy, and it’s a challenge that non-financial media also face when trying to grow circulation. But it needs to be addressed, and there could be a gap for a fresh business weekly that captures the imagination of the new business class, and which mainstreams issues like empowerment rather than treating it as a necessary evil.”
The business media are in a fix. Trapped in legacy structures comprising top-heavy newsroom management, large staff complements and outdated editorial approaches, they have static or declining circulations or audiences. Compounding this, their advertisers have seen opportunities to reach much larger bodies of consumers via non-traditional methods.
The quality of good business journalism has been weakened by defections of experienced people to other professions, inadequate training, poor remuneration and development, and of course, the subtle pressures brought to bear by the advertising community.
These are not new phenomena — the trends have been gathering momentum for some years. And yet new products continue to be launched onto the market, using some or all of the old models without recognising their failures or vulnerabilities.