The Graaff-Reinet Advertiser is heavily reliant on the local economy, so when businesses in Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape started struggling during the 2020 lockdown, so did the newspaper.
This was according to Paula-Ann Smit, former editor of the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser.
“Graaff-Reinet is going through a severe drought and the local economy is struggling to survive. A lot of small businesses went under, as you can imagine,” said Hugo Redelinghuys, who took over as editor of the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser in April this year, over email correspondence.
Graaff-Reinet, with its iconic Church Street, has a population of around 30 000 people, according to the 2011 census. PHOTO: Sourced/Sneeuberg Website
Local businesses could not afford to have their advertisements in the paper, according to Smit. They also stopped seeing the value in advertising in print in comparison to advertising on social media and other digital platforms, she added.
“Different papers have different models. I think ours was about 60% ads and 40% news. So the less ads there were, the less news we were able to put into the newspaper,” said Smit. This meant that the newspaper became physically smaller and this, in turn, caused readership to drop, she said.
Merging newspapers
The Graaff-Reinet Advertiser is published by a company called Group Editors, which merged several of their publications across South Africa throughout the past year, Redelinghuys said in email correspondence.
“This is purely for economic reasons because the smaller papers (Graaff-Reinet Advertiser/Oudtshoorn Courant) don’t get sufficient advertising support, and without that it does not make any good business sense to print or run them individually,” he said.
In late April 2020 the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser, due to its economic struggles, was merged with the Oudtshoorn Courant. The two publications now share all news published in the newspaper and on the respective websites, he added.
“The front and back covers are different for different areas. The middle is [mainly] adverts. It has changed [from print to online]. I’m surprised it’s still going strong,” said William Biggs, a local Graaff-Reinet farmer and reader of the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser.
Infographic comparing the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser and the Oudtshoorn Courant, according to information from the South African National Census of 2011 as well as Hugo Redelinghuys, editor of the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser. INFOGRAPHIC: Alistair Seymour
The thinner newspaper, as well as the combination of two separate towns’ news within the publication, caused a drop in readership as the Graaff-Reinet community felt that they weren’t getting access to relevant news, said Smit.
“Oudtshoorn and Graaff-Reinet are about three to four hours [apart], so the [Graaff-Reinet] community did not really appreciate that they were reading about Oudtshoorn. So I would get people calling me to say, ‘Why is there so much Oudtshoorn news’,” she added.
The Graaff-Reinet Advertiser became short-staffed, with one journalist passing away from Covid-19 and the other moving to another publication, according to Smit.
Cover page of the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser published on 23 July 2020, reporting on one of their well-known journalists falling ill due to Covid-19 in June 2020. PHOTO: Sourced/Magzter, available here
Staying relevant
Despite all the difficulties, the newspaper seems to still be supported by local farmers and the community, according to Redelinghuys. The Graaff-Reinet Advertiser now prints 2 500 copies each week and the Oudtshoorn Courant prints 2 800 copies, he added. The price of a copy of the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser has remained at R4.00 a copy, before and after the lockdown, according to Smit.
“A change in the stories was definitely the sport. I had no sport on the back page. One day, I had to take pictures of a tortoise and pretend that there was a tortoise race!” she added.
The Graaff-Reinet Advertiser focussed on positive stories during the initial strict national restrictions, said Smit. There were a lot of Covid-19-related deaths in Graaff-Reinet, because of its older population, she added.
“We’ve definitely lost readers and advertisers but we’re working hard to get [them] back. Two weeks after I joined as editor, a lady phoned me to say that our newspaper had sold out at two shops before ten o’ clock [which was] the first time that had happened,” said Redelinghuys.