Caribbean newspapers under threat

The introduction of modern communication technology via the internet has had a significant impact on human development throughout the world bringing undoubted benefits in many fields and enabling small countries like ours to have easier access to |the outside world. In particular it

has had a profound effect in the field of education as both students and parents will attest.

Yet it has not been without its own challenges and pitfalls, many of which have affected aspects of development throughout the world, sometimes with negative consequences. Parents for instance, often express concern about the degree to which smartphones and their ubiquitous platforms seem to be virtually taking over the lives of their children and becoming a major distraction.

Modern technological means of communication have also massively impacted on how the world does business enabling greater efficiency. While in general this is a positive development, in practice small countries often find it difficult to compete with the giant conglomerates of the developed world. So rapid is the pace of technological development that it has forced rapid readjustments in the way production takes place and the manner in which business itself is conducted.

Naturally, in such a situation there will be winners and losers and some industries have been harder hit than others. One has witnessed massive job losses, and, in some cases, there have been devastating effects on small scale industry with smaller enterprises forced to shut up shop where they cannot find solutions to problems not of their own making.

One prominent example is in the media and within it, the print media in particular. Historically, the print media developed as an integral part of capitalist development. “Read all about it” became a popular jingle encouraging the populace, at least those who could read, to read newspapers to find out what is taking place in one’s society and in the world at large. It also became the premier medium for advertisers to reach prospective customers. As the cost of business increased these newspapers became more and more dependent on advertisements for their main source of revenue since there was a limit to which they could charge for their product while production costs were spiralling.

By the 21st century, even major global newspapers, the icons of the western media, found themselves struggling to keep afloat. Those with deep pockets, even persons and companies not originally associated with the news media, began to buy out “big names” in the industry while many others both at the global, national and local levels found it very difficult to survive.

We saw the emergence of strategies based on appealing for consumer support in the form of subscriptions and even donations. Newspapers which had embraced modern technology by offering customers free access to news on their websites, found out that this could be suicidal in the new environment and began to charge for such access. Some could no longer stay the course and either sold out or folded.

The Caribbean was no different in this regard. Indeed, we can safely say that the Caribbean has been one of the areas hardest hit. Permit me to quote one of the region’s most respected journalists, Mr Wesley Gibbins, from a paper entitled, “On the viability of the Caribbean media”, published in the Columbia Journalism Review earlier this year.

He began by noting how, because of our vulnerability to “small market size, narrow advertising bases, brittle economies and high susceptibility to natural disasters”, the Caribbean media sector had embraced digital technologies in the 1990s. But the dawn of the 21st century brought unpleasant realities. With the onset of global platforms with free access and fly-by-night news outlets, Caribbean people felt that they no longer had to pay for news, they could get it free online.

This had a profound effect on the print media. Mr Gibbins gave as an example the warning in 2019 by the Chairman of the region’s largest business conglomerate that “online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter had considerably undermined indigenous media viability and needed to be regulated and taxed”. Sadly, Gibbins noted, not even the media community in the region paid much attention.

Since then, the regional media situation has grown worse. Mr Gibbins notes that even in the larger media markets in Jamaica, T&T and Barbados, media houses were experiencing diminished revenues and faced a challenge of “rising online advertising at the expense of traditional avenues”. Facebook and Google ads were taking the lion’s share of the advertising business.

Without sizeable advertising revenue, it was difficult for the print media in particular to survive for, in the face of rising production costs, “the dance can’t pay for the light”. A range of strategies was employed including mergers of existing media houses, but even these were found wanting. As a result, Gibbins noted, “in the smaller Eastern Caribbean territories, there have been closures, consolidations, and, in a few cases, a move to exclusive occupation of online terrain”, but even then, these are not enough.

In several countries printed newspapers have disappeared altogether as the rising costs of news production cannot match “free news and information” on social media platforms. Domestic advertisers themselves are now seeking a “bigger bang for the buck”. Starkly speaking, the print media as we know it in the Eastern Caribbean, faces a grave existential threat.

In our own situation, the three local papers in print which used to be printed abroad now print at one local printery. The situation is such that if one newspaper were to fold up, the viability of the printery might be affected, leading to the possibility that we might one day wake up to no print media in SVG.

The implications of this are huge and this column will explain in a subsequent issue.

• Renwick Rose is a community activist and social commentator.