Daily Maverick, the latest casualty in a growing job-loss crisis in SA’s publishing industry, continues its calls for new legislation that would promote new forms of financial support from the philanthropic and private sectors, to keep the country’s newsrooms above water.
By now, the crisis is well documented. According to the publication, over the last 15 years SA has lost an estimated 70% of the news media workforce.
On Friday, Daily Maverick added to these statistics as it announced it would begin a cost-reduction exercise, aiming to cut about 15% of operating costs.
“We understand that this is a difficult period for everyone at Daily Maverick, especially our colleagues who will be directly affected,” said Daily Maverick’s founding CEO, Styli Charalambous.
“Without legislative changes to promote and encourage support from philanthropic entities, corporates and the public, the sustainability of journalism will continue to be out of reach,” Charalambous said.
“An industry that creates so much value for the world shouldn’t be struggling this much. The market context is broken and we urgently need policy reform to fix it. Nothing else can.”
Estimates by the Wits journalism department show internet giants, including Facebook and Google, have taken over 60% of local advertising revenue over the last decade.
An industry that creates so much value for the world shouldn’t be struggling this much. The market context is broken and we urgently need policy reform to fix it. Nothing else can.
— Styli Charalambous, Daily Maverick’s founding CEO
In recent years, several media houses have announced retrenchments as they streamline their operations to cope with the loss of advertising revenue, particularly for legacy businesses. This has resulted in media professionals losing their jobs, as well as companies such as Associated Media Publishing, which ran titles such as Cosmopolitan, shutting their doors.
Much of this has been attributed to the shift in news consumption to digital platforms, as a result of smartphones and more affordable access to the internet.
In Daily Maverick’s case, restructuring would affect the entire organisation “both through retrenchment and the absorption of responsibilities and duties”.
Some freelancers and contractors will be affected, but in terms of retrenchment, about 5% of permanent employees are expected to be affected by the move. The company did not disclose how many people it has on staff.
This move comes a week after Independent Media — owners of publications such as The Star, Cape Times and Isolezwe — announced its own retrenchments, citing substantially the same reasons as Daily Maverick about an unsustainable media industry, as well as banks being at loggerheads with business-person Iqbal Survé.
All the while, Naspers owned Media24 — one of the largest players in SA — is working to close the print editions of five newspapers, transitioning three of them to digital-only brands, placing 400 jobs at risk.
Print editions on the block are Beeld, Rapport, City Press, Daily Sun and Soccer Laduma, as well as the digital editions of Volksblad and Die Burger Oos-Kaap and digital hub SNL24.
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