Death in the newspaper family

November 7th, 2009

It is a sad day when any newspaper closes, and the Weekender, whose last edition came today, was a paper that had enriched my Saturday reading considerably and had found a definite place in my home.

There are two questions one must ask: why did it fail, and does this mean there is no place for such a serious newspaper in this big city of ours?

Weekender was launched on the back of the Business Day. That was the only way to keep the costs down and make it possible to launch a new paper at this time - sharing premises, staff and other key resources. But it was also that factor that probably doomed it to failure.

Without a full and proper reporting team, the paper would always be slow in breaking news. This seems to be a trend in South African newspapers: to try and do journalism without journalists. Or at least without enough of them. It has been true, for example, of the Sunday Independent as well.

It meant that the Weekender was a pleasurable read, but never a must-read. The result was that it only sold 12 000 copies at best, and a paper is just not going to survive on such small demand.

On the future of serious papers in this city, one has to say that we are left at the top end of the market with the Mail & Guardian, the Sunday Independent and the financial weeklies (which are a different beast). The only serious, quality daily we have is now Business Day, which has its own particular niche.

But in this economic climate, Business Day has been losing money, as has the Sunday Independent and from what I hear, the M&G is not thriving financially.

Since the failure of ThisDay a couple of years ago, and this one, one must be sceptical about the prospects for the entry of a new quality paper in Joburg.

Weekender and Business Day editor Peter Bruce in his blog today argues that there is still space for a quality Saturday newspaper. I am less optimistic than him, as i think that readers like me get our additional reading now via the internet. Today I have enjoyed the Financial Times weekend edition on paper, the New York Times on my kindle - which delivered it to me efficiently, cheaply and in a pleasurable and portable way to read it - and glanced online at the weekend edition of The Guardian of London. A new paper is going to have to fight for my attention.

What would win me over? Some real reporting, that’s what. Not features, not opinions and columns, but some evidence that money is being spent on real reporters going out to cover the things I know and give me information I have to have and can’t find elsewhere. That would make it indispensable, and very few of our newspapers fit that description.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Print