WHY Social Media Is Quietly Killing The Main Stream Print Media Outlets

Why The Social Media Is Quietly Killing The Main Stream Print Media Outlets

• The Major Print Media Houses Need to Do A Lot of Brain Storming and Re-branding To survive the Social Media Revolution
• In The Next Five Years Many Newspapers Will Have Perished Completely

In the western world , most eminent people freely quote newspapers like the New York Times,The Time Magazine , The Sun  as a source of reference because of their impartiality in news reporting.
 in Uganda today its very difficult to hear an influential person quoting any of the Ugandan newspapers.
 This can easily be attributed to the rigid editorial policy of our papers which are aligned either as pro-government (like The Newvision) or anti-government (in the case of The Monitor) 

You find that objectivity and the truth is already a casualty.
Therefore you you to make value judgement about the Ugandan media industry is like extracting a jigger from a baby.

Ordinarily, many newspaper buyers will judge the papers by their content and editorial policy.

But on the other hand, many people instinctively judge a newspaper by the amount of shillings its copy costs on the streets.

 There is a presumption that the higher the price, the better the quality of the copy.

But that is misleading yardstick for judging a newspaper.  More shrewd people judge a given newspaper on the width of its readership and its circulation levels in general.

There is a high possibility that the higher the circulation the higher the length and width of its readership.

And for you to get to its real readership ratings you must get the copy sales-meaning the amount of copies it sells on a given day will obviously translate into the number of people who read it.  

But it’s difficult to get the true figures of the copy sales because of various challenges ranging from delays in tabulating copy returns (newspapers that have not sold) and getting to the bottom of the actual copies that have been sold at a given time.

Therefore judging a newspaper through the lenses of copy sales might turn out to be very tricky.

LOGICAL ANALYSIS

But if you want to ascertain the strength of a newspaper in terms of financial power, then you have to look at the adverts it carries.

The higher the number of adverts the more the revenue generated

If a given paper has very many adverts then there is a good chance that its writers are of very high quality because they are very well remunerated-because it generates enough revenue to pay quality staff.

There is a spontaneous expectation that once a journalist is paid a decent wage, you can be assured of a more balanced, researched, unbiased and engaging story.

Print Media houses that don’t pay well lead the journalists into temptation.

The Phenomenon Of Killing Stories

A journalist that is not paid well will not find it fitting to research the story because he is poorly or not motivated at all.

 Such a journalist will, in most cases, resort to extorting vulnerable news-makers. For instance if a powerful politician has got a scandal of let’s say corruption-related or sex-related scandal, the poorly paid journalist will use it as opportunity for extortion.

Instead of consulting the scandalized politician for his side of the story, he will get to him with the main objective of extorting money that will result into killing the story.

Once the powerful politician realizes that his scandal has been busted but has not been published as yet, he will certainly bribe the journalist to kill the story.

At the highest level, most of the media houses cannot publish stories that tarnish the reputation of their clients –who give them adverts.

That has been the story of Ugandan journalism for very many years. These are some of the reasons why people no longer trust the print media as a trusted source of information.

Very many journalists who are doing well did not get better through the per Diem from the media houses they work for.  

Many of them either threatened to blackmail a powerful person who bought them out of it, or joined government as cadre journalists to get an extra buck.

Talking of cadre journalists, this is a trend that has also taken root in Uganda.

Some journalists cannot publish scandals about government because they have hopes of landing jobs from government.

When a hungry journalist  get a scandalous story that can put government in a very tight political situation , he will obviously use it as an opportunity NOT TO prove how good and professional  he is at his job but to create connections with government officials.

Andrew Mwenda's Exhortations

For instance there a story of a very famous journalist who was known to be very hostile to government in the past.

 Andrew Mwenda got a story about ministers who had allegedly been bribed by powerful foreign oil firms.

there is some truth that the documents that verified the story was a forgery.

He was therefore expected to act professionally by exposing the said forgeries.

But instead Mwenda used it as an opportunity to meet president Museveni.

The controversial story which he refused to publish was linking three powerful ministers, the then prime minister Amama Mbabazi, foreign affairs minister Sam Kuteesa, and Hon Hilary Onek for receiving bribes from foreign oil firms.

Although the story was premised on false accusations, Andrew Mwenda should have published it and proved that it was a false story circulating around to preempt it.

But by not publishing it and exposing it as a forgery, Mr. Mwenda did a disservice to Ugandans because the whole thing managed to make IT to the floor of parliament and was debated for so many hours.

By NOT publishing this misleading story, as a misleading story for that matter, Mwenda gave the story the mileage to circulate within the corridors of power to the extent of getting debated in parliament.

However, despite of behaving unprofessionally, Mwenda managed to achieve his cardinal objective of wining back the trust of president Museveni which had been bruised in the past.

That story of the oil scandal is the one that re-connected president Museveni with Andrew Mwenda.

 Today Mwenda, who once called president Museveni a villager, is one of president Museveni’s biggest allies.  And consequence is that Mwenda is no longer regarded as a trusted source of information or source of guidance on national matters. 

But remember that Andrew had built his journalistic reputation by attacking and critiquing president Museveni ,in a one dimensional manner. so it was always hard to get objective journalism from him. because he was either purely against or for president Museveni at various points of his career.

And that is the tragedy of Ugandan journalism.

Andrew Mwenda is not alone. There are very many journalists who have built their careers from abusing president Museveni or praising him.  

 there is a phenomenon which shows that many journalists who start by abusing Museveni normally end up in the same bed with him and vice varsa.

 For instance the current government spokesman Mr Ofwono Opondo started his journalist career as a rabid critic of president museveni before he was co-opted into the NRM. 

This has left the country without a reliable journalist.

 Yet a professional journalist should neither be against or for government but for objective journalism.

The Inevitable Rise Of Social Media

 all these anomalies have forced the citizens to resort to social media as a source of information , its imperfections notwithstanding.

And I like to think that social media is completely going to kill the print media. People who are connected to social media don’t have to buy copies of newspapers to get informed about what is going on in the country.

  

No print media house can get a story which has not first leaked to the social media. By the time the print media gets a story, the people will have already read it on social media.

And this is bad news for print media which is now becoming an endangered species at a very first rate.

The way machines replaced manpower is the same way email replaced post office, the same way mobile money is replacing banking and it will be the same way social media is replacing print media.

The effects are already visible.  The Ugandan papers are becoming weaker in content and weaker in financial power.

Today the papers have got no attractive stories, they have reduced on circulation and they have very few adverts.

What has remained relevant in many of these newspapers are columns of opinion writers. In the near future the readers will buy newspapers basing on the quality of opinion writers it has in them.

Other than that, the print media will die a slow death. Only media house with printers will survive.

And even these media houses with printers will have to either reduce on the price of the copy or be very creative to survive.

The major print media houses need to do a lot of brain storming and re-branding the social media revolution.
In fact when social media became fashionable around 2008, some of  us pressurized Red-pepper newspaper  director Mr Arinitwe Rugyendo to start a website for the pepper.

But he tactfully brushed off our arguments by reasoning that  it (publishing stories online) would affect the copy sales.   With time Mr Rugyendo has proved to be prophetically right.
Most people will not buy a copy of newspaper as long as they are assured of reading it on social media.
Some newspapers delay to share their stories on social media to compel people to buy the copy. but many of them have given up and are sharing stories of the whole newspaper on social media.
 i personally read Bukedde and The Observer online. that means i cannot spend a coin on the publication. that puts the print media industry in danger of extinction.
it obviously means that we should not send our children into the journalism profession.

Could this mark the slow death of print journalism?

Veteran journalist and former private secretary to the Ugandan president Mr. Tamale Mirundi once said that there is no money in journalism. He says that for him he started as a newspaper vendor, wrote stories, owned a newspaper, but has only benefited when he is clocking sixty years. And he has benefited after getting adopted into government as an assistant to the president and not as a journalist.

Ends

  The author, Fred Daka Kamwada-Kamwada is a senior journalist and a blogger;

  

   Connect with him on kamwadafred@yahoo.com or 0782480121