Press: Netizens deserve better

One study says at the start of that year, the country had six Internet service providers and 30 000 users, and as of December 2000, the number had risen sharply to 48 000.
A 2005 United Nations report commented that at the time, 10 per cent of Zimbabwe’s 14 million people had access to the Internet. Researchers put Zimbabwe’s online users by 2008 at about 5 million, with a sizeable percentage of these living outside the country’s borders.

The figures show that a large percentage of Zimbabweans depend on the Internet for information, including news. All major newspapers in the country have online versions of their product available on the Internet. The audience is definitely there, but is the content appropriately packaged to cater for the needs of the online users?
The Internet offers a multi-platform environment for the presentation of what is increasingly becoming portable, personalised and participatory information.

My feeling is that most Zimbabwean newspapers are failing to fully use the medium, and this may narrow down to the media companies’ strategies. It is important to understand which of three strategic positions a media company is taking when they put news online. It may well be a way to market the print product, or a form of experimentation, or, crucially, the development of a new business. Whatever the case, a study done in Norway explains that newspaper management styles largely determine the nature of its product’s online presents. The research identifies four management forms, namely defender, analyser, reactor and prospector.

Newspapers that refuse to change, instead concentrating on their core-business of producing a printed product correspond to the defenders category. The focus is on maintaining the tradition of publishing, and there is little or no intention of seeking opportunities elsewhere. They find it more important to produce the same thing in a more efficient way. Most belong to the old-school journalism grouping that values, more than anything else, quality of the printed copy.

The advantage of this form of management is that the printed product maintains a rich product in terms of content. However, lack of investment and attention towards the Internet means their online product is likely to be dull, difficult for the reader and desperately lacking innovation and imagination. Analysers are organisations that operate two product-market domains, one relatively stable, and the other changing.

Newspaper companies operating as analysers operate their print newspapers routinely and efficiently using formalised structures and processes. Their print division set-up is well established and is afforded vast resources. On the other hand, they view the Internet as a new phenomenon, and therefore closely watch both their competitors and prevailing world trends, and rapidly adopt ideas they feel will add value to their products. Such newspapers’ web presence is shaped by what is happening around them, and their structure, design and content would mirror contemporary practice.

Prospector organisations are a lot more innovative. They continuously search for market opportunities and experiment regularly with new trends and strategies.
They are frequently the creators of change and uncertainties that their competitors must respond to.
Though their strong appetite for product and market “freshness” means they are not completely efficient, their online presence is strong, and with products and services seldom matched by others.

The least efficient and perhaps most unstable of the groups is the reactor.
Here, management can see all the changes around them, but is unable to respond effectively. One reason for a media company to act as a reactor is when top management does not have a clear, articulated organisational strategy. Management too may be unable to fully shape the organisation’s structure and work environment to fit a chosen strategy, especially when it fails to ring changes, despite being confronted by overwhelming evidence to do so.

They know they need a strong Internet presence, but are unable to make that happen. The media companies’ online strategies are therefore shaped by statements such as, ‘Everyone is doing it, maybe we should too!’ quickly followed by the tacit question, ‘So, does anyone know how we should do it?”
Fear, uncertainty and doubt inhibit progressive development of business. In today’s world, there is no need for media companies to be either defenders or reactors. There is enough evidence to show two things – that Zimbabweans are going online in their millions daily, and that that same crowd is the readership of all the main newspapers have lost according to the latest readership survey. The guy that used to come to the street corner to buy a paper is no longer on a first name basis with the street vendor.

He is now acquaintances with the cashier at the nearest Internet café where he reads all the newspapers, uses the social network, watches videos, sends emails, tweets and “skypes” for just dollar for a whole hour.

And what are the newspapers giving him?
The same content they put up at the street corner for a dollar.

The strategy for online editions lies between the analyser and prospector categories.
The newspapers must give the online visitor the complete Internet experience. Give the user a chance to participate through instant feedback and platforms for sharing content with friends and colleagues.

This also helps to shape what the media company provides by listening to what its readers are saying.
The media companies must provide more services that their print version cannot. For instance, on weekends, why can’t the online newspapers post latest scores from around the country? In fact, news updates should be frequent and made available throughout the day. This means that considerable financial and human resources should be allotted to such a project. A full range of visual communication tools is lacking on most, if not all local online newspaper sites. Interactive graphics and videos not only add colour to the sites, but also add value by providing additional or alternative information to the typed words.

They also help authenticate information presented by the online newspapers. If a newspaper juxtaposed a video of the stage video next to a story headlined, “Macheso thrills fans”, then the readers may say they have been presented with the full story.

It is time for them to tap into a readership base that is arguably bigger than those buying the conventional product, so that they create fresh opportunities for the online journalist, the video editor, the web designer, the programme developer, the graphic designer, and perhaps more importantly to the media company – the online reader and the advertiser.