Digital vs print

IT WAS interesting to read in the newspaper this week that Koos Bekker, CEO of Naspers [JSE:NPN] (publisher of, amongst others, Fin24) said that his company would not get rid of its print media, but that it was planning to switch over to digital platforms in the long run.

Indeed, it is an undisputable fact that the era of the “dead tree” is slowly drawing to a close. No doubt the printed product – newspapers, magazines, books – will survive for a considerable time. But we are in a transition period in which one medium is slowly but surely making place for another.

How will the new medium look? And how will it influence society at large?

The short answer is: Nobody knows. All we know, is – to use a cliché – that things will never be the same again.

What we do know, is that the digital medium will not simply be an electronic copy of the print medium, as it tends to be right now. In Europe and America media innovators are already grappling with the problem.

In his weekly media column in the Dutch opinion magazine Groene Amsterdammer Chris van der Heijden refers to the media guru Marshall McLuhan’s metaphor of the “horseless carriage syndrome”. This is due to the fact that the first motor cars looked like horse carriages without horses. Only later on these vehicles became truly transformed into motor cars.

Van der Heijden quotes McLuhan: “We see the present in the rearward mirror. We are marching backwards into the future.”

The fact is that people usually graft innovative ideas for the future onto existing practices. Often the revolutionary potential of the new technology breaks through slowly – but when it happens, it often takes turns which very few expected in the first place.

No doubt this will happen with news media as well. Already the orthodox newspapers are to a greater or lesser extent struggling with dwindling circulation and advertisement income. Younger people tend to read only the short, snappy news flashes they get for free on the internet and social media, and to avoid the longer analyses in the serious daily newspapers.

However, one should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Yes, it is reasonable to assume that the traditional printed newspaper is on its way out. It will, no doubt, be replaced by digital platforms of a nature that we cannot fully fathom right now.

But recently Philippe Remarque, the editor of a quality Dutch newspaper, De Volkskrant, was interviewed on television. He said some things any media person should seriously consider, given that his formula has produced the only exception in the Dutch market, namely a newspaper with a growing circulation.

Remarque immediately agreed that newsprint was on its way out. Its death may take longer than people assume, he said, but in the end it will fade away.

Its place will have to be taken by digital platforms of some sort, and experiments have already started. These experiments also include a new business economic model, because news media must make a profit.

(An aside: In view of their extremely important social mission – to empower people with information – the media do not exist solely to make a profit; they must make a profit in order to exist. The distinction is important.)

Anyhow, the most important caveat, according to Remarque, is that whatever form the medium may take, the quality of the content may never be compromised.

People are nowadays bombarded from all sides with a deluge of facts and information. Much of it is never properly verified. And it is often not properly analysed or placed in context.

That was traditionally the job of the reporter or analyst writing in the newspaper or magazine. Of course, people have become much more critical, and the work of the journalist is no longer automatically accepted. That is quite in order, but still, somebody has to make sense of the mass of material being spewed out into the world.

This remains critical. And in order to continue with this, Remarque said, any news medium – whether it is a traditional newspaper or a new digital platform – must not cut costs unduly as far as its expenditure on specialised personnel is concerned.

De Volkskrant, according to him, is experimenting with all sorts of ways to sell its quality content, but it is not cutting back on its journalists. In contrast with so many other publications, his newspaper has not laid off a single journalist.

This is indeed the bottom line. Of course, there must be financial discipline. But there is a fine line which should not be crossed: If you cut too much in personnel, the quality of the content is compromised, you lose readers, and your profit is affected.

Of course the medium has to change. But when all is said and done, the medium is less important than quality.

- Fin24

*Leopold Scholtz is an independent political analyst who lives in Europe. Views expressed are his own.