Let’s admit it, the newspaper industry is an industry in decline and in need of innovations that will draw back readers and advertisers.
According to Forbes, the newspaper industry has been in steady decline triggered by a loss in readership and ad revenue which have been migrating to other media, most notably digital. While the declines have been ongoing for a number of years, the pandemic and ensuing sluggish economy impacted a number of core newspaper advertisers such as retail, movies and promoting community events. These categories cut back on their marketing budgets, accelerating declines in ad revenue.
A report by Reuters Institute on Philippine media industry during the pandemic said the newspaper industry has been hit particularly hard as COVID-19 curtailed distribution. The Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI), one of the biggest dailies, offered early retirement to employees, let go of several columnists, shut down its Metro section, and shrank the number of its pages. Earlier, it closed its free paper Inquirer Libre and tabloid Bandera, keeping the latter only online. Later, PDI launched a digital subscription package where its Inquirer Plus mobile app combines access to one of eight local newspaper partners including Edge Davao. PDI says this strategy will help local journalism remain sustainable and is in keeping with the growing subscription model worldwide.
In the community front, at least a dozen big community papers temporarily ceased publication, returning later in the year with reduced pages or frequency. Philippine Press Institute (PPI) has been supporting struggling community papers by paying for some of the stories they post on its website, PPI News Commons.
While it is true that going digital makes sense in a country that spends the greatest amount of time online in the world (nearly 11 hours per day), particularly on social media (more than four hours), Edge Davao has held on to its role as a community publication. The paper also suffered severely during the pandemic and had to limit printed copies and focused on its digital platform. This was necessary as the volume of ads on print dipped with many businesses shutting down including our big clients in the hotel and real estate industries.
We get it. Social media as a source of news have risen to 72% (+4pp) in our survey, with TikTok even becoming a destination for news among Filipinos (6%) alongside Facebook (73%), YouTube (53%), Facebook Messenger (36%), and Twitter (19%). These are the realities of the new world.
But then, there is joy and triumph in living through adversity and fly the flag of community journalism.
Edge Davao, 14 years old and counting, will remain committed to this mission.
