Recalibrate, refresh and revive journalism for South Africa’s democracy How do we adjust local journalism for the better? DR GLENDA DANIELS has some ideas.
6 I THE MEDIA YEARBOOK 2021
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for executives), the Covid-19 pandemic entered, some media retreated and retrenched, some closed down, but then some outfits (for example Daily Maverick) did counterintuitive things, hired more staff and even launched a print edition. But even this was done not through old business models, but through another kind of experimentation or innovation: social/corporate partnerships or membership models.
THE BAD NEWS: JOB LOSSES, CYBER-MISOGYNY, DISINFORMATION What else has changed? The media landscape has become more threatening for women who crack high-profile corruption-busting stories. Misogynists see women as easy targets; yet women have not left the space. The media landscape shows an appalling anti-feminist backlash against women journalists, seen in how they are trolled online, and even threatened with rape and murder when crooks in power act against them, aiming to intimidate them into silence. Covid-19 could not have arrived at a worse time for journalism. State of the newsroom reports from 2013-2020 show that journalism steadily shed
jobs over the past decade, starting with the economic downturn of 2008. Researcher Reg Rumney’s report examining the impact of Covid-19 on job losses in journalism, released in June 2020, found that more than 700 journalists were retrenched in the first few months of the pandemic, and that local news lost the most, with 80 community newspapers closing down.
THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE HAS BECOME MORE THREATENING FOR WOMEN WHO CRACK HIGH-PROFILE CORRUPTION-BUSTING STORIES By July 2020 a new round of retrenchments was announced when Primedia declared job cuts. The Primedia Group has 786 full-time employees but has not given a job cut figure. In July 2020, Media24 announced it would retrench about 510 employees. This followed an SABC announcement that about 600 jobs would be cut (now reduced to 300 as the broadcaster continues to tussle with the communications minister).
themediaonline.co.za
12.04.21 09:38
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ecalibration, refresh buttons and revivals occur through the disruption seen in the flux, fluidity, and especially experimentation (hard paywall, soft paywall, no paywall) around how journalism is to be paid for in a media ecosystem that is shifting to online, with concomitant social media and disinformation. Then, of course, there’s the question of how to get audiences to recognise the role of a diverse media in a democracy. The other side of the story is this: how to get journalists to heed and listen to audiences. Just about everything has changed for journalism in the age of new media: it’s the era of social media and big tech companies gobbling up the advertising. And, untaxed as they are, they are laughing all the way to the bank. An offshoot of this is mainstream journalists being retrenched in droves, while newsrooms are run as 24/7 engines, with anxiety and burnout the norm. Another ‘trend’ is that no one has any winning, fixed idea on how to pay for journalism. And so experimentation continues. In this age of declining media company profits (okay, no profits, just fat salaries
