The innovation challenge for the South African newspaper sector

Abstract

This is an inquiry into what the South African newspaper sector is doing to obviate challenges brought about by innovations that have disrupted the speed, platform and frequency of reader engagements. While the general challenges, including rapid loss of readers, faced by newspapers are known, what is not known is what innovations, if any, are introduced by the South African editors in order to remain relevant. I used the Sectoral Systems of Innovation framework to look at how the sector gen-erates knowledge, how it learns, competes, co-operates and diffuses its innovations. I conducted semi-structured interviews with selected experts - editors and media in-novation scholars - in three of the four main newspaper houses in South Africa. Key findings include that there is a palpable sense of hopelessness about the ex-pected demise of the printed newspaper. Editors acknowledge the centrality of the readers to their innovation attempts, but these remain largely ignored. I also found that processes used by various media houses to introduce innovations are archaic and random.