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The New York Times is Dying - A Lesson For Kenya’s Media
In his article, New York Times Running On Fumes, Henry Blodget says, “Not sure how it came to this so fast, but the New York Times (NYT) is approaching the point where it will have to manage its business primarily to conserve cash and avoid defaulting on its debt. This situation will only get worse as advertising revenue continues to fall, and it will be very serious by early next year.”
Mathew Ingram adds, “Ad revenues for the company’s traditional media operations, including the New York Times newspaper, fell by 14 per cent in September. Ad revenues for the online operations, including About.com, climbed by 14.5 per cent — but those operations still only account for 12 per cent of the business. The bottom line: Online ad revenues in the year to date climbed by about $10-million to $79-million, but ad revenues for the company’s traditional businesses fell by about $200-million to $1.2-billion. Even if online ad revenues were to increase ten-fold, it still wouldn’t make a dent in those losses. Classified sales alone were down by 25 per cent.”
What can Kenyan newspapers learn from this?
There are two important lessons here:
1. The newspaper as we know it is on its deathbed. The New York Times is perhaprs one of the best known and most repspeted newspapers in the world. Its readership is huge. Yet, the traditional media, aka the “newspaper”, section is failing. Why is this so? Answer: the future of news is not in old media.
2. The internet works. Notice that as the old media section of the New York Times is failing, ad revenues for its online operations actually increased. This suggests that the future of news has to be online - that’s where the money is.
What can Kenyan Newspapers do?
I covered this fairly well in another article: How to Save Newspapers - 3 Steps that Work. The basic idea is to shift the focus to online ventures. Of course the internet is yet to really hit Kenya in a big way but it is just a matter of time. Why wait till the last minute?
Read the press release on Yahoo Finance.
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6 comments for “The New York Times is Dying - A Lesson For Kenya’s Media”
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The internet is the way to go…The advantage of the internet is you can click on to your area of interest and read what tickles ur fancy…How convenient.
The Media houses with publications shld work on news websites. Their reporting 4 the sites shld b fashioned 4 the net.
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In Kenya, old style newspapers still have a considerable future ahead of them. In the States, most people can access internet at home, in the office or at school (for students). As a Kenyan, if you went to those places and asked for a cybercafe, you will get surprised looks. Contrast with the situation in Kenya where internet usage is less than 5%. There are people who have computers in the office and they cannot even open a Word Document or print out something. Kenyan media at least have an online presence so that they’ll be ready for the day when most Kenyans will be online.
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At the place I work, there’s a guy who has his secretary print out all his emails then he reads them, writes (by hand) the responses and gives her to type and email.
So what you say is very true.
I think, though, that in five or so years, the situation will be changed drastically. There’s the cables landing next year and the rate of mobile internet growth is impressive.
However, our newspapers are still safe. It wouldn’t hurt to start planning early though.
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Do you really think that most Kenyan newspapers will rely 50% of their resources on online media?
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mosh Reply:
November 17th, 2008 at 10:37 am
They don’t need to put 50% but they need to put more than they do, as in they should pay more attention.
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True. I find out more things on Google news than on actual news. Infact, I dont watch TV news
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