We were there on day one of City Press and it was around the late 90s we first got wind that the digital world would someday take over our lives; when and how it would come we didn’t quite know. It has come the way it has come, we now know, as the curtain finally falls on the outmoded print City Press.
The mind shoots back to the annual Naspers’ Leadership strategic conference, held over three days, where digital savvy Koos Bekker, then CEO, had first sounded the bell about the imminent technology and the need to prepare for it.
Alright, we already had computers on our desks at the time, dislodging the typewriter. We had the first generation cellphone, again no problem there as these were harmless but useful analogue cellular networks confined to voice telephony. The internet followed and we embraced it as it helped with Computer-Assisted-Journalism.
Then the smartphone, the little monster that in one fell swoop gobbled up everything into a single indispensable gadget, almost displacing the traditional camera, linear TV, the calculator, radio and everything else all at once, even the computer itself. As we speak the darn handset is within arm’s length from you and along with associated gadgets and devices, brings to us full spectrum digital capabilities and dynamism, spawning a whole new industry we call “Social Media”.
Content consumption habits and patterns have changed. The corner café and street vendor have had their newspaper selling world wilted; technology delivers the news as well as digital content straight to your device, a click away without even raising much of a sweat.
The result has been remarkable as it has been catastrophic – with the shrinking and ever dwindling circulation figures, the print media had to give way. The mighty tech has once more proven to be quite a formidable challenge, the digital apocalypse devouring everything in its path.
We love it though. It talks to specific audiences based on factors like age, location, interest and much more in very cost effective ways. It encourages the creation of global communities in ways that were never possible, and no prohibitive print and distribution costs. Yet this is only the beginning of the evolution of the revolution, artificial intelligence is still to go full bloom, its use in many forms and many articulations.
Bekker’s predecessor Ton Vosloo, when asked whether the end is in sight for printed newspapers, had said: “No, the printed media has already adapted by presenting content on various platforms. It is a transitional period and Naspers is strong enough to carry printed newspapers”.
True. Naspers and its Media24 division did just that for the longest of time. As old hacks we will miss the works – the smell and soft touch of the freshly issued newsprint that came with the era of the humming, giant printing press, churning reels of newsprint overnight well into the morning, feeding the waiting, insatiable giant distribution trucks; the whiff of the faint smell and odour the machines produced, the dripping ink, once dried up and solid, the product in the hands of every reader whose content accelerated human progress. A history-rich 42 years, the printed City Press shone all the way, showing the way all the way. Digital is the new exciting chapter we should delightfully embrace.
Len Kalane is the author of The Chapter We Wrote (The City Press Story) and recipient of the Media 24 Legends Award 2019. He is the founder of PiE Digital – www.piedigital.africa