Digital Deliverance LLC

I frequently receive phone calls from friends here in America who tell me, “I’ve taken a risk. I’ve quit my job with American newspapers ‘X’ and taken one with American newspaper ‘Y’.” I smile because they don’t know what taking risks is. My client Trevor Ncube, who publishes newspapers in Zimbabwe and South Africa, does. Not only does has he taken financial risks, but, as a reporter, editor, and publisher, he’s been threatened and, for a while, had his native Zimbabwean citizenship stripped by the Mugabe regime. His employees has been threatened and sometimes jailed.

CNN International’s African Voices program this weekend interviewed Ncube. I consult to him about New Media (he owns and publishes South Africa’s award-winning Mail & Guardian), but I think printed editions have a vibrant future in Africa, certainly for the next decade. Ncube believes the time is now right to publish an objective daily within Zim, and is working to launch Newsday there this year.

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CNN’s African Voices airs worldwide, except in North America: another example of American parochialism. A fellow American recently asked me if Zimbabwe was near Rhodesia.

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Speaking of international topics, here is one that is little known inside North America or even Europe. Just when Sarkozy is increasing the French government’s subsidization of French daily newspapers and the American Congress is holding hearings about possible subsidization of American dailies, the Chinese government is ceasing subsidization of its nation’s dailies, according to a report in The Australian Monday. Chinese government funding will cease to some 350 media groups.

I know that the newspaper situation in the Chinese mainland is quite different than in the US, UK, France, Spain, Japan, Australia, or even Taiwan. Printed editions have a vibrant future (at least for the next decade) in industrial countries, but in post-industrial ones print is in decline. The reason for that is the majority of consumers in post-industrial countries now have instant, ‘always-on’ broadband connectivity, which has markedly changed their media consumption habits. The majority of peoples in countries with industrial economies don’t have that in their homes; they have no Internet access there and, if they have any Internet access, it’s generally at the office, and often limited or censored. They’re still reliant on the traditional Mass Media of print and broadcast.

I think the reason why Beijing has begun to cease subsidization of Chinese dailies is probably as a continuing part of its  denationalization of Chinese industries. In this, the Chinese are no different than Eastern European governments, and the move is unrelated to the woes of Western newspapers.

Although the Chinese move is unrelated, I nonetheless expect that American politicians who are opposed to any US government subsidization of domestic newspapers can score domestic US political points by pointing to the Chinese move.