Food For Mzansi joins the fight for public-interest journalism in South Africa, threatened by financial strains. The publication’s co-founder Kobus Louwrens emphasises its vital role and pledges to find solutions for a sustainable future.
The recent closure of the Daily Maverick, if only for a day, really brought home the fact that professional journalism faces an existential threat.
Food For Mzansi thrives on optimism. We live and breathe by our mission of co-creating a new face for South African agriculture. In our five years, our publication has grown in leaps and bounds, breaking down many barriers.
Starting from scratch, we’ve built up a small, dedicated team and managed to compete neck-and-neck with the most respected mainstays of agricultural news and journalism.
This means we’ve been bravely fighting and winning against the odds. When you’re busy pioneering, there’s not much time to consider the bigger picture.
You keep your focus on the game and your eye on the prize. And the prize in our case is building a socially impactful, independent media company that is self-sufficient and commercially viable.
The Daily Maverick’s shock closure made me lift my head above the battlements to consider that bigger picture.
And like it did for many other people, it brought home the fact that there is a very real possibility that the money that still sustains a much-diminished news and journalism sector could dry up to the point where professional journalism ceases to be viable.
There was a time before journalism, only a few centuries ago, and now it seems a very real possibility that we could be facing a time after journalism.
What is professional journalism? It is the practice of asking probing questions, bringing new information into the public consciousness after rigorously and methodically checking it for factual accuracy and countering bias. It is a cornerstone without which democracy cannot function in a meaningful way.
As members of the Association of Independent Publishers (AIP), we understand how local news media struggles to stay afloat. As the new player on the agri-media block, Food For Mzansi sees how venerable institutions that have served our sector for centuries are struggling.
The decline of watchdog media
I am a journalist who honed my skills during what now seems like a golden age of media. I witnessed first-hand how impactful my beat reporting was: I covered the courts, local government at a metropolitan level, the environment…
Citizens in our democracy have already lost most of those watchdogs. Our media simply isn’t financially capable of safeguarding our interests at such a granular level anymore.
How did it happen? The internet and innovators in online classified advertising hit the old media model like a tidal wave, changing the reading habits of consumers. And then multinationals like Facebook and Google hoovered up the remaining advertising revenue and funnelled it out of the country.
The Daily Maverick and the AIP are doing a fantastic job at reaching readers and news consumers with the message that ultimately it is our society and our democracy that are threatened when professional journalism is under threat.
At Food For Mzansi, we recognise this threat too, and we want to assure you that we’re committed to doing our bit to ensure a sustainable future for hard-hitting, public interest journalism.
My appeal is to advertisers, especially the large corporations who work to maximise shareholder benefits. Support local media by maintaining direct relationships with journalists and sales staff. Don’t sacrifice our free press for the convenience of online services and social media.
- Kobus Louwrens is the co-founder and strategy director of the Food For Mzansi Group.
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