Last week end I took
sometimes to walk around and enjoy the pleasure of meeting new friends. My
first stop was at the newspaper kiosk which I normally visit every week end.
Like many others, this kiosk is located at the road junction alongside a bus
stage – a perfect location to get the attention of customers. Although he never
attended any formal education, Mr Malingumu – the owner of this kiosk acts like
a really business expert. By the look of how he gets things done, one could
easily notice that, he practices almost all the basic of small business
management.
I normally enjoy my
presence at this kiosk as I can know what is covered in the news papers while
chatting with Mr Malingumu. In most situations I could talk to him while
pretending that I am trying to figure out which news paper to buy. By the time
I make my decision I always find myself aware of news covered in all news
papers of the day.
Unlike other weekends,
I noticed some changes in the way Malingumu had displayed the news papers on
the table at his kiosk. To the surprise of many, all the news papers were
stapled. I could not go through all news papers as I used to do. I don’t know
what happened to Mr Malingumu but let’s assume that he had just obtained
another business degree from the street university.
As I was thinking of
how am I going to get to the news something came to my mind. I definitely
remember that I have a laptop; and my Vodacom line has unlimited internet connection.
Why should I buy the news papers then while I can easily access them from the web?
So I quickly visited the web and within few minutes I could tell what was
covered by most news papers in Tanzania.
As I was about to
shutdown my laptop and continue to enjoy the freedom and pleasure of the week
end, I got a call. It was a call from my cousin informing me about an
interesting business story covered in the wall street journal. What a
coincidence? Perfect timing – I told myself. Because I was still connected on
the internet, I decided to access the article online. Well, I could see the
headline of the article but I could not access its contents as it required me
to purchase or subscribe for the news paper.
Until that moment I had
not realized the lessons I was going through. It was the lesson which made me
to give a second though on how we run and perceive the media industry in
Tanzania. Have we really recognized the commercial aspect of the media
industry?
The way we perceive
media in our society may be wrong. We obviously perceive media as charitable
organization. We do not perceive media owners as investors or business people.
We neither see media practitioners – the journalists as professionals. We are
missing a consideration of what it takes to establish a media organization.
Like any other investments, establishing a media company requires significant
investment.
In print media for
instance the whole chain – from production to the intended reader requires
serious investment. Finance theories suggest that, investors always expect to
earn returns from funds they have committed in their investments. Like any other investments, media companies are
expected to earn return to their investors. Practically this means that, there
is need for media companies to be run commercially.
One of the most
important commercial aspects is to improve the quality of goods or services
offered and minimize costs in order to attain customer satisfaction. In the
case of print media, they should make sure they deliver quality news at
affordable price in order to meet satisfaction of their customers – readers of
news papers.
In order to deliver quality
news, media companies have to invest seriously in news production. Reporters –
original story producers should be professional and experienced personnel.
However, it appears that many regional reporters for media companies in
Tanzania are either not motivated or lack required skills and competencies.
Some media companies for instance pay their regional reporters per stories.
More surprisingly, the amount paid to these reporters is not worth mentioning.
With these kinds of unmotivated and unprofessional reporters, it may be
difficult to get quality news.
Another commercial
aspect which is perhaps overlooked by media companies is news display in their
websites. In most news papers websites one can easily access all the news
without any restriction. Moreover, analysis reveals that there is significant
interchanging of news link among social media such us facebook, tweeter, and
blogs. Free access to news on website and free sharing of news links among
social media sites may cost original owners of information in terms of decline
in sales of news papers.
If the status quo
remains, media companies may find themselves in difficult situations due
decline in revenues. A declined in news paper circulation (sales) may
discourage adverts. This is because many organizations always want their
adverts to appear in a media company with significant set of customers. A
decline in both sales and advertisement revenues may make the media company
fail to operate and probably go bankrupt.
May be Mr Malingumu has
decided to commercialize what most of us used to perceive as community service.
His immediate solution was to come up with a way which will prevent his
customers from gaining free access of his services. Unlike the wall street
journal Mr Malingumu locked the stories by using staple pins instead of the
password or subscription fees.
Like Malingumu, media
companies in Tanzania must find a way of protecting the stories they have
invested in. They should work hard to make sure that they maximize investors’
returns through maximization of revenues from sales and advertisements.
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