Analyses by: Maxwell Adombila Akalaare
VARIOUS sectors of businesses the world over and Ghana in particular continue to receive mounting challenges from the ever increasing patronage of the Internet and technology for that matter.
This Internet, powered by technology and its numerous products continue, on a daily basis, to provide fertile grounds for businesses to thrive while at the same time gradually crumbling others.
The country’s theatre industry, until recent rejuvination of the sector by some theatre performance favourites nearly collapsed following the emergence of video and other enhanced equipment such as VCDs.
Another such sector of businesses that presently receives direct threats from the increasing patronage of the Internet in Ghana is the newspaper industry.
Until the emergence of the Internet, access to news and current events was the sole perogative of the media; both electronic and print.
While most people stayed glued to their electronic media in wait of the 'news', others made it a daily routine and habit of flipping through newspapers as they searched for current events in their sorroundings and the globe in general.
The emergence of the Internet and its consistent rising patronage among all manner of persons across various age groups, backgrounds and education qualification has, however, virtually snatched this sole perogative from the media.
With access to the net, most people are now creating and maintaning their own platforms on which they update themselves and their supposed audience on current events making news in the country and the globe as well.
The electronic media’s timed sort of news reportage in the country even makes it next to this Internet journalism as far as ‘news’ was concern. And as for the daily nature of newspapers, the least said about them the better.
The shooting up of social media such as facebook and the likes has equaly not helped matters as they have intensified the quest for young people to continually stay online.
As most young people stay glued to their laptops; networking with friends and family through these platforms, they intermmittedly update each other on events around them that they feel worthy sharing.
The media, in this modern era can therefore not claim sole ownership over news delivery in Ghana and the world over, a situation that continues to, on a daily basis, reduce the audience level of these media houses and consequently do same to their revenues.
The Internet patrons while online also get access to various kinds of advertisements and promotions (a major source of revenue and audience to newspapers) online as equally pertains on the print and electonic media. It is interesting to note that most of these adverts are mostly repeated on the media, be it print or electronic.
Indeed, the net’s consistent rising patronage among people within the globe and the country in particular is also slowly but surely snatching advertising revenues from the media and newspapers in particular on to the emerging social networks.
As more and more people continue to spend much time and attention on the net, advertisers would gradually see no reason why they should continue to advertise on newspapers, TVs and on radios when modern mediums powered by the net provides them higher audiences and a flexible way of getting those adverts through to these changing audience.
This hiking patronage of the net among people of all walks of life therefore makes it worthy asking if the media, particularly the newspaper business has any use to these people.
As these challenges continue to threaten the patronage of newspapers in the country, newspaer houses would definately have to live up to the challenge or gradually bow out of the competition, courtesy a new form of media, the Internet Journalism.
The way forward for the newspaper business
In business competitions, one sector or company thrieves on the weaknesses of the other. The saying that one man’s meat is another man’s poison therefore manifests clearly well in the business arena.
The delayed sort of news relay from the traditional media (electronic and print) as pointed out earlier has helped fertilised this present increasing patronage of Internet Journalism among most people in Ghana and the world at large.
But even as people continue to switch to these net powered social mediums for real news, the credibility of those imformation still leaves many people doubting. Most Internet sourced information mostly turn out to be half truths.
This phenomenon has therefore helped fuelled people’s perceptions that news stories from Internet sources might as well not be true afterall.
The newspaper industry can therefore easily capitalise on this lapse to revitalise its fast dwindling ‘news delivery’ perogative which is equally doing same to its revenue fortunes and existence in business.
While acknowledging that some Internet sourced news stories and information indeed raise eyebrowns on their credibilities, one must accept the fact that some Internet sites have gained their credibility over the years. The likes of myjoyonline.com, citifmonline.com, ghanaweb.com and others have over the years attained credible images as sites to rely on for credible information in the country when it comes to news stories.
Newspapers houses should therefore devise ways of nurturing and maintaining credibility as far as news delivery is concern as a strategy of wrestling its audience from Internet Journalism.
Another area that would be of interest to newspaper house as they battle this Internet Journalism is the issue of ‘news reporting and ‘news analyses’.
At the moment, an increasing number of people continue to receive ‘raw news’ from their mobile phones, laptops and the likes courtesy the Internet. But what these people now yearn for are insightful and deep answers to questions such as “What led to this?, how did it all start? when was the first of such an incident in Ghana? would such a thing ever happen again? and the likes.
People would therefore now expect newspapers to ananlyse the news rather than just reporting on it; afterall, it is that same news that they read on the net so why bother reading newspapers again, they may ask.
As a result, newspaper houses must shift from doing news reporting to news analyses if they indeed want to remain in business come the next decade.
Another thing is for newspapers to groom readers. Ghana has a poor record of reading habits especially among the youth and the same holds when it comes to the reading of newspapers for whatever information one may think of. Newspaper houses must therefore cultivate and continually nurture a reading culture especially among the country’s young individuals in other for them to take over from their ageing readers.
The Junior Graphic, printed and published by the Graphic Communications Group Limited is a good initiative in this regard and other newspaper houses must therefore take a cue from it.
Otherwise, before the begining of the next decade meets the end, many people would have to strategise to revive, this time round, not the theatre industry but the country’s newspaper businesses.
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