Daily Monitor & Co. Want You to Pay For News. Does it Make Sense?

The rise of the internet brought about too much disruption in very many fields. One of them is media, and by media, I am talking about news specifically. For a long time, television stations, radio stations and newspapers had the monopoly over news. If you wanted to know anything that happens, you would have to wait on them. And because of this, they attracted eyeballs. And the advertisement dollars quickly followed.?

But fast forward, the internet which brought about the rise of social media changed things. For the first time, the news was available in an instant/real-time from various sources. Anyone could be a source of news. By the time the New Vision or Daily Monitor printed a story the next day, it would be old.?

But it is not just disruption in the delivery of the news that the internet has caused. They have taken away a significant chunk of the advertisement dollars. Advertisers go where the attention is. They meet the eyeballs where they are. Not only was it cheaper to advertise on the internet (social media or Google Ads), it was where young people were parked. If you ask any average young person (below 30), the majority of them no longer watch TV.?

I was an avid newspaper reader. For almost the first 18 years of my life, I read the New Vision and Daily Monitor every day because my mum would bring them from work every day to feed my appetite. And I went to schools where these papers were available from break time. But I haven't touched a newspaper in almost a decade. There is no reason to watch TV unless it is football.

Faced with dwindling attention and revenue, media houses flipped the switch. They want you to pay a subscription fee every month. This model has been tried by various media houses both in the West and even here. Nation Media Group (NMG) is trying to do that. But the subscription model has worked for a few media houses, with the majority of them flopping badly.?

Layoffs have become layoffs in media in the West, and in Africa, journalists are fighting for their lives with low salaries as the media houses struggle to break even. Vision Group has also reported significant losses. Subscription, without a necessary change in content, is not the solution. With the reliance on the advertisement model, the goal was to have as many eyeballs as possible. With subscription, you have to provide even more value for people to part with their money.??

For example, when I want to read a story on Daily Monitor and it is "paywalled", I simply visit other sites that have it for free. And 8/10 times, someone else will have that same story. In some cases, when the story isn't available anywhere else, I don't find it enticing enough for me to part with my money. It isn't a pain killer to me, so I will just move on with my life.?

But there are two sites that I religiously pay for. One is The Athletic and the other is the Harvard Business Review (HBR). As a fun fact, Harvard Business Review makes more revenue than Forbes! It makes more revenue per employee than even the New York Times or The Economist. Its subscription model has worked for a very simple reason. When it comes to news, HBR does not tell you what happened, but instead, they will tell you how it happened or why it happened/the significance of the event. They do more analysis, than reporting. You can always find the what (reporting) from a random Twitter page. When you report the what, it is timely. When you talk about the why or how the story becomes timeless, there are so many stories on HBR that are 5+ years old that I still enjoy reading. A timeless story will be relevant in 2003, and it will still be so in 2024. For example, the story of how VCs make decisions is one that I have recommended to so many entrepreneurs over the years. It was written in 2021.??

Similar situation with the Athletic. First of all, it is a niche media company reporting mostly on sports. Niche audiences are the future. But secondly, they will tell you the how. For example, one of the biggest stories in the summer was Chelsea beating Liverpool to sign Brighton midfielder Moises Caicedo. Every other site reported this story. The Athletic dug deeper. It had two stories of how a ￡4m player turned into a ￡115m midfielder in three years, then had another piece about why he could be the perfect partner for Chelsea’s other expensive midfield recruit, Enzo Fernandez.?

Media houses need to start treating their news as a product. They need to provide proper value. They need to shift more from reporting news (this can be done by young journalists for sure) to deeper analysis. News that makes you smarter. News that one can recommend to another. Subscription, in itself, is a tough business model in Africa, and any media that is just slapping a paywall to its regular news hasn't done enough due diligence. The media could also do with employing experts in fields that can provide that deep analysis and understanding, rather than simple career journalists who haven't become domain experts. News needs to be treated like a product, with a clear value proposition and smartly customized to meet a particular target audience.

?The question every media house should be asking themselves is how they can make a core group of users to binge-read. I can spend an hour or two on Sunday reading stories from the Athletic or HBR. If I don't read them regularly, I will feel like my brain is missing out on content that would make me smarter or learn something. Yes, I know Uganda Airlines is making losses, but can you provide a proper analytical piece to dissect if it will ever be profitable? Many currencies in Africa were very volatile in 2023, but the shilling remained stable. Why? Any random account on Twitter can tell me that the shilling remained stable. Why would I pay to read the same story? But for the why, I am hooked. If subscription is the new model, then the value proposition should be strong.?