The ailing news media industry needs to do more than just survive (Part 3)
In this third article of the series “How to slay the media sustainability monster”, we explore the challenge of the leaky talent faucet that has plagued the industry for the last decade. More specifically, we can define the problem as “How might we reclaim lost editorial skills, build capacity and talent pipelines and aid the continuous development of our media professionals?”
South Africa, like the USA, saw around half of its newsroom staff leave the industry since 2008. Although in the USA, some of these losses were made up by positions in new, digital-native operations. We must now be left to reconstruct the talent losses that left for safer and better-paying pastures, and figure out how to fulfil the demands of the new skills required in the modern-day media organisation.
As the great disruption came for the news industry, big (often bloated) organisations were squeezed by necessity and/or private equity raiders who recognised high-margin media businesses could still eke out profits if costs could be slashed faster than revenues were declining. Either way, the net effect was an exodus of editorial (and other) talent, that more often than not, went unfilled or replaced by junior staffers at a fraction of the cost. At the same time when corporate communication needs exploded to protect the profiteers, journalists with decades of experience were lost to the other side. Not so fun fact: Jeff Bezos employs more people in corporate communications at Amazon than he does journalists at the Washington Post.
An entire generation of journalists and editors no longer work in the industry as the available positions reduced and the rates of pay couldn’t keep up with corporate offers. And with reduced demand and a dire outlook for the industry the, journalism students are actively being told to bypass careers in journalism due to the lack of opportunities.
As the news media migrates from business model reliant on advertising and cover prices towards reader revenue in the digital space, it is effectively a swing from B2B to B2C or direct to consumer. This shift is not insignificant and requires an overhaul of strategies and a host of new skillsets to be developed. Examples include Product and Technology, Data Science, Consumer Marketing and eCommerce skills. The first hurdle is recognising the need for these new skillsets and then carving the scant budgets in a depressed environment for jobs that pay pretty well in the corporate sector, and where even local corporates compete with international players for those skills in South Africa.
The solution to these problems lies in a) incentivising experience editorial staff back into the industry, b) ensuring a pipeline of talent eager to join and c) being able to afford the talent in new skillsets.
In a previous column, I recommended investor tax breaks could be offered to incentivise investments into accredited media organisations that were members of the Press Council. In a similar vein, these members in good standing could be offered tax breaks that aid in the affordability of highly-skilled staff. We saw temporary Pay As You Earn (“PAYE” - Employee Tax) holidays for employers, in Covid times to aid cash flow, so why not a permanent PAYE holiday for accredited media houses, for their top 35 employees? The number of employees is not trivial, as most organisations can build a strong leadership and management base alongside other senior positions with this number. Smaller media organisations wouldn’t be prejudiced and these benefits would allow a diverse range of media to grow from smaller startups to medium-sized and beyond. The PAYE holiday could be used to offer more competitive rates of pay to skilled editorial and technical staff, attracting people back into the industry with competitive pay and purpose-driven work.
To repair the pipeline of new talent coming in at the new recruit level, we could institute a media studies bursary programme where, an appropriate amount of students per year (in journalism, management and technology) join accredited media houses after completing their studies on government-funded “community service” programme, similar to the medical fraternity in some countries.
These solutions rely on a willing government to play its role in furthering the cause of media, as a cornerstone of democracy. It may require a special class of entity to be created (as suggested by Julia Cargé) but could also be enacted by regulations dependent on membership of, say, a Press Council body equivalent in each country. Most governments around the world have already declared journalism an essential service and this way, have the ability to pay more than lip service to efforts of sustainability.
