“We are preparing the caskets of print media,” said Abdullatif Al Sayegh, CEO of the Arab Media Group, at last month’s Arab Media Forum. Othman Al Omair, editor-in-chief and publisher of Elaph, a daily electronic paper from Saudi Arabia, said print media has died and gone to God’s side. The death of print media and the rise of online media was a hot topic at the forum, with most industry experts predicting the demise of the newspaper.
Once upon a time some people thought that radio would kill off print. And it was also once said that television would kill radio; later that video would kill TV. And now, that the Internet will kill all of the above. The all-powerful, all conquering Internet.
Since it began its spread in the early nineties, the Internet has changed, evolved and innovated. For good or bad it has now arguably altered society permanently, and changed the very fabric of the communications industry.
With social networks, for instance, people are more connected than ever, (leaving little room for “sorry I haven’t kept in touch” excuses). And with streaming video content, the days of missing Justin Timberlake’s appearance on Saturday Night Live in New York, even if you’re all the way in Dubai, are numbered. With online news updated by the minute, there is no reason to be out of the loop with the world’s current affairs. When a shoe is thrown at a president, news spreads, and fast. First the video clip, and then the endless discussions on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and the like.
Thanks to this sense of urgency and immediacy, the act of leafing through a newspaper sheet by sheet, reading through columns and in-depth features, wrestling with the sheet to position it strategically next to a cup of coffee, and pawning the sports or lifestyle section off to a more interested companion seems like an obsolete concept.
And so a debate has begun: is the end of print nigh? In the West, we’ve heard of newspapers folding and shifting to digital platforms. In the UK, The Independent’s parent company, Independent News and Media, is in serious debt. In the US, titles are disappearing at an alarming rate, as recorded by Web site Paper Cuts. Things are looking up on the East side, though; in India, industry experts are speculating growing readership, while China recently launched the new English-language newspaper Global Times.
Somewhere in the middle, both geographically and strategically, the Middle East is also at the heart of the debate. How is the regional print industry currently doing, where is it going, and how is it evolving with the rise of digital?
INNOVATION THROUGH INTEGRATION. The National, dubbed by its editor as being “the last great newspaper launch in history”, is following an integrated path. “If you’re a newspaper, you have to look at it not as a newspaper, but as a content stream that is currently wrapped up in a newspaper, but which in a few years will be wrapped up into several other things, from mobile phones, to new media, to television programs,” says Martin Newland, editor-in-chief of The National. “What I would appeal for from people is that they don’t all panic now as they did in the West, head for the hills, dismantle the great newspaper brands, and use convergence as an excuse to rearrange costs. A lot of publications in the West have panicked too early, began to shut things down and began to reach out for this great sort of thing called the digital age and convergence, without working out a practical plan for instituting it, and more importantly than that, a revenue plan.”
The newspaper, just a little over a year old, has already branched out; it started off with a Web site, and even launched its own television program – Inside The National – in February. The half hour show is broadcast five days a week on Abu Dhabi TV, and looks at the headlines set to appear in the following day’s paper. As of last month, The National also launched a blogs section, with seven reporters blogging on topics including business and property.
“Certainly in the Arab world, blogs are a more risky proposition than in the West, in terms of political and social issues,” says Newland. “But you have to begin to adopt this move towards citizen journalism, so consumers have a little backhand talk with you, instead of a dead tree landing on their doorstep every morning, saying take it or leave it. You have to allow people to comment and to use your paper as a platform for their views as well. That’s coming. But how you monetize that at the moment, no one really knows yet.”
How to monetize online ventures doesn’t seem to be at the top of Jamil Mroue’s concerns; the editor-in-chief of Lebanon’s The Daily Star is more concerned with being relevant by going online, and doing it right. He says that even if they’re not getting money from their Web site, this is where their potential advertisers are reading them.
Mroue admits that while The Daily Star copy-pasted print content to the newspaper’s Web site for a long time, he is now aware that going digital requires it’s own “special way of thinking.” “In the last five years, this tsunami of culture and research and discoveries and this sea of change in attitudes has produced three things,” explains Mroue. “First, newsprint is becoming scarce and expensive. Second, culture is globalised, i.e. I am where I am in the world, but I am connected to where I want to be in the world. And third, the number of news products, gadgets like telephones, mobiles, portables etc., and the number of consumers today is exponentially different. So these three factors have reversed the story.”
The editor of the troubled Star (see “Star turn,” page 40, Communicate, Apr. 2009) says that print media has become a “headache” in terms of cost and delivery, and that he has started “retooling” by adjusting content, style and graphics to improve on their existing Web site. “Whereas the consumer was tolerant before, consumer expectations have become far more demanding in time, availability and access,” says Mroue.
FALLING FIGURES. Meanwhile, regional market research and observations show readership numbers dropping year on year, according to Amer El Hajj, buying director at Starcom MediaVest in Dubai. But he says this is definitely not the death of print, attributing print’s lasting regional legacy to a sort of tradition. “As far as newspapers are concerned, mainly local papers, they’re about heritage and roots,” explains El Hajj. “Meaning if my father reads Gulf News, I have a loyalty to it. This is common with locals and Arabs.”
Newland also touches on the tradition of newspapers in the region, citing a “wonderful sort of tactile habit.” He says that as long as that habit exists, so will revenue, and the possibility for better titles and display advertising. “I’m not saying this is the future, what I’m saying is don’t bail out prematurely,” explains Newland. “Now’s the time we should be preparing for when more people get laptops, when more people get used to having their content in digital form, how they want it and when they want it, and when more people get less tolerant of the notion of having to pay for content, as has happened in the West. And that will come here.”
The move towards digital is definitely happening, but El Hajj says this is not the sole reason behind increased online advertising. “The agencies were changing the market identity of online,” he says. “It’s not like Gulf News or The National introduced online and we jumped to go online. We encouraged those titles to have a Web site and we started using it. We developed a lot on those titles and we believe those papers will be investing more behind digital in order to catch up with all the agencies. They’re changing because they are trying to adapt to the quick moves of all the agencies.”
El Hajj says the agencies began changing when they started feeling consumers going online more often. While print may have been the medium of choice two or three years ago, he says clients insist on online advertising today. “We used to be very conservative about digital, now it’s critical to have an online campaign,” he says.
Newland says that the shift from print journalism to online consumption hasn’t affected advertising regionally yet, and that the changes we are currently witnessing in the market have more to do with the economic climate. “What we’re seeing in advertising at the moment is to do with cyclical stuff, the recession,” he says. “Not the digital age. We must not get the two confused. I think there is a lot of money in print and publishing capacity. But we should have an answer in three to five years’ time, because the drop off from print to digital doesn’t happen gradually: it drops off quickly and suddenly. I’ve seen it happen in the UK and in Canada; one day you’re printing on paper and the next day your entire revenue base has disappeared. So you have to start planning now.”
Over at The Daily Star, Mroue says they will maintain their print offering, because while he is a big advocate of going digital, he is being pragmatic. “It’s not a wise idea to throw print away and say I don’t care,” he says. “If you say you don’t care then you die. We’re testing our digital plan while still maintaining our workhorse, which is print. We will impress people with the versatility of our digital life, but print is where our money still comes from. How long will this transition for the growth of revenue continue to be viable on the Web? We don’t know. I haven’t met anyone who can say forget print.”
The area of monetization is one Newland says isn’t being researched enough, and not just regionally. No one has got a vast money-making news content web operation right, he says. “It’s not something only the Middle East doesn’t know about yet; the world doesn’t know yet.”
A QUESTION OF CONTENT. What is definitely happening with the various economic, social, and communication shifts is a change in content, both in quantity and quality. In a fast-paced, constantly connected world, people have shorter attention spans and are more demanding of immediate information. And in Newland’s opinion, this can have a bad effect on content. “The digital movement in the West has certainly led to the catering-to of those with the least time and the smallest attention spans,” he says. “Now that’s ok if you want to chase revenue, but it’s not ok if you want to defend public interest. In many ways, convergence has hoisted upon the media a massive sort-of dumbing down.”
Newland says this trend is making its way over to the region, but Mroue argues the shift to digital actually gives writing more flexibility. “Call it more forgiving, allowing, accepting ways of reading,” he says. “You don’t accept this variety in print. If you find a lot of variety in The New York Times, you raise your eyebrows. If you find it on The New York Times website, you’re not really bothered, it’s fresh. For example, it’s not really important if you write a story about sandwiches in ancient Egypt and put it on the web. But if it’s not in the right place in the paper, it doesn’t make sense.”
The Internet will kill print, it is said. But the same was said of radio and TV, and neither managed to put a nail in the coffin. Print is still here – it has proved to be more hardy than people think.
Perhaps it is better to say, “The Internet will change print.” That the change is profound one – rapid, and often painful – is clear, but leading figures in the region such as Mroue and Newland insist the industry should not panic. Print is still here, and its capacity to adapt, innovate and endure, both in this region and beyond, may yet surprise the doom mongers.