The Kenyan newspaper industry is grappling with challenges of digital disruption, and this has greatly affected business.
Gone are the days when newspapers achieved triple growth year on year and had massive profits as a result.
Each quarter, we now see revenues falling, profits declining at an alarming rate, newsroom staff cuts, restructuring of newspaper businesses and our readers migrating to other platforms. This is because of reasons such as trust, and the fact that we don’t understand our readers enough to deliver the content they value.
Unfortunately, we still maintain the same old business model that is not working in this digital age.
The good days are gone and we don’t seem to be acting like we are in a fight to save our destinies. We have been infatuated by our historical successes, thinking that will lead to the death of newspapers in Kenya in the next few years. We are still in a value chain thinking, unable to see how we can interact and collaborate with other players on equal terms.
To survive this onslaught, we must collaborate at the industry level in areas where we can save some cost and free up some money that can be invested back to the newsroom. For example, we must optimise our supply chain to ensure newspapers are delivered on time at a minimum cost.
The average distribution cost is two-thirds of the cost associated with running a newspaper and this can be reduced by outsourcing and consolidating transport and logistics between the newspapers at a strategic level
Every evening, the four leading media companies in Kenya send four vehicles to each route, hundreds of kilometers away to deliver newspapers to the same shared agents, vendors and distribution points. The sad truth is that these vans are half empty due to declining circulation volumes and yet we cannot optimise on this.
We have four major printing presses that are currently underutilised and are idle 90 per cent of the time after printing the daily paper. The sad truth is that our total industry print order can be printed by one printing press. It’s time we consolidated or outsourced our printing to save costs.
Newspapers have to abandon the old identity of a dominant actor that rules the game. We have to let go of our egos, be vulnerable and talk to each other and other players in content generation business such as bloggers, telecom companies, and technology partners and create strong and powerful partnerships with them.
The current strategy most of us are adopting is to cut cost as the cost associated with running newspapers are almost outpacing the revenues and this is not sustainable. The danger is that once we cut cost, the quality of content goes down and we continue to lose readers
Our focus should be on our core business which is to create and generate quality content that provides insights and in-depth well-researched news that customers are willing to pay for. We must work on gaining the trust we have lost from our readers. I believe there is a demand for high-quality content and this is where we should compete on, not on assets.
The newspapers volumes are down but there is something unique that we offer that make readers come to us. We must come together and preach this gospel as well as reach out to others and form alliances. As business leaders in the newspaper industry, we must come up with solutions that will make papers competitive in many years to come.
Agnes Kalekye Nguna is the Chief Operating Officer of the Star and is the organising secretary of the Media Owners Association. The views expressed are her own and not the publication stand
