I have always been an avid reader, and I particularly love newspapers, particularly the New York Times.  I found that many South African newspapers really have deteriorated in quality over the years and there is less and less to read that is not essentially a press release or blurb from some or other company.  In that regard I found an article on MoneyWeb entitled “Here is how bad things are for newspapers” by Hilton Tarrant most interesting.  He illustrated just how badly newspapers have fallen in recent years and continue to plummet.  The Star, for example, which once upon a time sold over 200,000 copies per day, is down to 93,000 a day and The Citizen is doing quite well, because its circulation is only down by 25% in the last 5 years alone!  The Daily Sun has lost 44% during that time, Beeld has lost 43% and The Cape Times is down 33%.  The only thing that does not change is that newspapers put up their advertising rates every year which essentially means if you advertise in a newspaper every year you get less value than the year before – which is probably why I don’t advertise in newspapers at all.  

The article highlights for example The Media 24 Group, who publishes a variety of magazines and show their operating profit last year, on the printed version, that indicates that the newspaper, magazine and book department must be losing about R50 million a year.  It is only a matter of time, if this continues, that we will see far more closures of magazines and newspapers.  They recently announced the closure of Heat magazine, whose circulation is more than half in only 4 years. When you hear about an approximate R50 million loss you must put into perspective that the magazines that this company publishes included almost all the biggest magazines in the country, and yet they are still losing money in that division – that would include Huisgenoot, You, Drum and Move!  Yes, we all know that everybody has moved to the Internet but would you, with your money, invest in a company publishing a newspaper or a magazine?