Newspapers fight for survival as online news click with readers

New media is proving that the world will always need news but not necessarily newspapers.

The gradual decline in circulation to the point where printing presses in some countries are becoming obsolete is the result of readers opting to access news online at their own convenience.

Even in China, which has a strict Internet policy, the trend of young readers going online first rather than buying a newspaper is being felt and is exerting pressure on media houses, which have realised that they have to change how they operate for newspapers to survive.

State-owned People’s Daily, one of the largest newspapers in China, has created a search engine, Jike, to tap the country’s 320 million Internet users to read its online editions. Started in June last year, the search engine works on the basis of having a global presence but delivers local news.

Save for being a normal search engine, Jike collects news from all over China from People Daily’s correspondents and maps the stories.

On accessing the site, users see a map of China with dots, each representing a story from a specific part of the country, and the stories are mapped to the village level similar to Ushahidi.com, the website developed to map post-poll violence in 2007.

Other media houses in China are also toying with the idea of a strong online presence, which they say is necessary if they are to survive.

“We know that in the near future we will be hit and influenced by new media. People below 30 prefer to know the world through the Internet,” said Tianjin Daily Media Group vice president Huo Jin told the Business Daily at a conference last week.

In Africa, Egypt is already bearing the brunt of new media affecting newspaper circulation.

Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper, the largest circulating paper in the country has seen its 1 million daily circulation slashed to 350,000 copies in a few years.

The Al-Ahram’s deputy editor Mohamed Elmasry told the Business Daily that wave of change would not spare any region and in the next five years it is likely to happen in East Africa.

So far, Kenya Today a publication of the Kenya News Agency (KNA) which falls under the Information and Communications Ministry is second of the mainstream newspapers to shut down after Kenya Times, a paper largely associated with Kenya's former President Daniel Moi folded one year ago. Details are not clear on whether poor circulation was one of the reasons that led to their closure.

But the KNA, can learn from Jike since it resembles the People’s Daily with a wide network of correspondence and being state-owned it can have access to bigger resources that other media.

Jike however invested a lot in human resources by employing the top students from the highest ranking universities in addition to poaching software engineers from competitors such as Google who are pioneers in the industry.

While Egypt, China and Kenya differ in population size, income levels and internet penetration the principle of globally accessible news that is rich in content is still shared.
jgachiri@ke.nationmedia.com