Journalism’s battle for survival starts with readers who care

Saturday was World Press Freedom Day. There wouldn’t have been too much of a song and dance about it on the day for the simple reason that there aren’t too many Saturday newspapers left.

It’s a bitter pill for those who laboured for years on a Friday night trying to bloody the noses of the big Sunday papers by ruining their exclusives, while producing an edition that was truly a hybrid of a daily paper and a weekly packed with features and interviews; the news behind the news.

Saturday was always a hard sell in the battleground for people’s attention; kids to take to school sports events, weekly shopping, funerals and then find time to relax.

The battle for the survival of the media isn’t just limited to Saturdays though, it’s every day of the week now.

We can all moan and journalists are among the most vocal, about shrinking operating budgets, declining paginations, unprofitable distribution areas – while raging about the perfidy of influencers and social media, but our media is dying despite the vital role it plays.

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From the glory days of the struggle against apartheid to the very dark and desperate moments of state capture post-apartheid, it was the media – in all its hues, shapes and individual biases – that helped hold the line and shine on a light on areas that those in power would have far prefer kept in the dark.

The Covid pandemic five years ago and the uncontrollable urge of the kleptocrats to filch food parcels and gouge personal protective equipment pricing was another great victory for South African journalists.

Without the media, South Africa would be a very different, cruel, country.

So how can we help?

It’s simple really.

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It seems perverse to be writing this to the one constituency that is doing its bit, you the reader by buying this paper, but we need to support our local media.

We need to start buying papers again.

Businesses need to advertise.

We need to subscribe to news sites.

We need to phone in to chat shows.

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We need to get back to watching TV news and not binge-watching streaming channels.

Most of all, if we haven’t paid for the subscription, we need to stop using pirate logins.

If it’s good enough to enjoy, it’s good enough to pay for.

Great journalism costs money.

We can’t afford the price of a world without a free press.

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