THE onslaught on the media has especially seen a decline in advertisers, smaller print runs and staff reductions.
Namibia went on lockdown in March, but the media was given a free pass to operate as they performed the essential service of keeping the public informed amid a pandemic.
This also saw media organisations seeking ways to keep head above water.
Namibia Media Holdings (NMH) in May announced plans to reduce employees’ salaries by 20%, while The Namibian recently restructured through early retirement retrenchments and renegotiating employee benefits.
Editor Tangeni Amupadhi in June said one of the measures the newspaper took to cut costs included cutting its subscription to the Namibia Press Agency (Nampa).
Amupadhi said the financial squeeze has also affected the paper’s print run and circulation figures.
“Printed newspaper copies have gone down from a peak of 78 000 in 2016, to 17 000 during lockdown and now we are at 28 000. However, the number of pages shows we are making no money,” he said.
New Era Publication Corporation (NEPC) managing editor Festus Nakatana says their circulation and advertising targets were hit hard, adding that the pandemic also sped up the structural decline of print media in the country.
“The initial lockdown of Windhoek and Erongo and the subsequent total closure of the country forced us to implement a number of health measures to put the health of our colleagues first while looking at other initiatives aimed at business continuity with the view of protecting livelihoods,” he says.
Another issue the pandemic brought was the limitation of journalists’ movements to cover nationwide news.
Nakatana says they had to look at new ways of extending their coverage beyond the print edition to reach as many people as possible.
“NEPC has a mandate and that is to share information. In this regard, I think we did relatively well to cover the critical communication, linked to the pandemic, while journalists, support staff and the distributors of our newspapers put their lives at risk to ensure we reach many people with the news we have been gathering.”
He says one should bear in mind advertisers are also feeling the pinch of the pandemic.
“The first thing they had to cut was probably their marketing and advertising budgets,” Nakatana says.
Confidénte editor-in-chief Max Hamata says the income streams of their newspaper was already impacted by the recent drought, and the publication is faced with monumental challenges as the economic impact of Covid-19 begins to take its toll.
“Instead of retrenchment, we took a decision to cut our salaries by 15% and reduce our overhead costs, including the closure of our offices at Ongwediva and Swakopmund. We are saving on rental expenses as our employees in those towns are now operating from home,” he says.
Hamata says the past few years have seen the media sector suffering a decline and recording significant job losses.
“It has already been recorded that a media industry as small as Namibia’s has already lost over 60 direct jobs and many others in support services since 2016, owing to cuts in advertising budgets and implications of recurrent droughts, which make it difficult for various sectors to function effectively, including the government, Namibia’s biggest advertiser,” Hamata says.
He says several newspapers have been forced to shut down while others have retrenched staff to stay afloat.
Nampa chief executive officer Linus Chata says the agency has not been spared the brunt of Covid-19.
He says reporters have not been able to scout for stories as they would under normal circumstances, and the closure of parliament also meant their information dissemination capabilities have been limited.
In addition, the agency has had a number of subscribers cancelling subscriptions, and in some cases, they have had to reduce subscription rates by more than half.
SOCIAL MEDIA
VS PRINT
Windhoek Observer’s editor-in-chief Kuvee Kangueehi says social media has changed the media landscape and is beginning to challenge their circulation numbers.
“We had already decreased pages in our weekly newspaper from 32 pages to 16 per weekly edition to cut printing costs. Other newspapers have done this too,” he says.
He says a couple of years ago, they switched from the large Berliner format to the cheaper tabloid format, which most newspapers in Namibia use.
They also had to decrease the number of reporters allocated to certain sections of the paper.
Then came the pandemic.
