The Star Blog Post

Every media house and outlet in Johannesburg that we visited was different. Some of them were young and excited about the prospects of online media and a new Presidency, like Kaya FM and Media Monitoring Africa. Some were more traditional, but evolving to incorporate new audiences, like The Sowetan and The Daily Sun. Then, there was The Star. Boasting 130 years of coverage, The Star stood out as older, dwindling, and static.

Under The Independent media house, The Star is a well-respected, nonpartisan print newspaper that offers a selection of stories from politics to entertainment to business and the economy. Its staff was a mix of older editors and journalists with a younger generation of news reporters and media specialists. As we walked through the floor of the newspaper, though, more than half of the desks were empty. Maybe that was partially because we toured around lunchtime, but of the empty desks, most of them didn’t have any sign of an employee coming back to it. At the beginning of our tour, the editor we spoke with made note that a few years back The Star used to be a vibrant place to work, but since online media has picked up, the newspaper has had to cut back on its reporters. This struck me as out of place.

Growing up with online media, and using it as the platform for the majority of my information, I would expect that moving to online journalism would require hiring more staff members. When I asked an editor about the situation, he described it as more of a

transferring of information—one reporter who covers a regular written piece would just publish that online as well. That got me to consider how The Star’s audience might be a factor to consider as why the outlet might be thinking of online media as detracting from its work, rather than putting more money into it to take advantage of online opportunities.

Even though The Star covers a variety of topics that would interest a broad South African population, The Star’s age might not be helping it reach the younger generation of South Africans who choose modernized media outlets instead. Rather, The Star most likely caters to older generations of people whose parents grew up reading The Star, so they read The Star. These same people are less likely to be online, which means The Star is less likely to put money into online resources and new staff—its more likely to repurpose current staff members and let others go.

That being said, almost every media outlet acknowledged online media and how it’s changing the landscape of the media in general. Outlets are trying to figure out how to bring in enough revenue if people aren’t going to buy physical copies anymore; they’re trying to figure out how to present information through online platforms; they’re trying to figure out if accessibility will be a problem if they go completely online; they’re trying to determine how news will work when it’s all instantaneous and coming from hundreds of different sites at one time. What is their individual role in that?

From what I saw and heard at The Star, it is not considering a lot of these questions and potential consequences of online media. It seemed to me that they don’t see a reason to yet. I’d be interested to see how that develops in the next few years, as other outlets anticipate being completely online within that time.