MarkLives.com

by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) The news that Times Media Group has brought back the famous Rand Daily Mail brand after almost 30 years is fascinating – and not because of the goodwill and nostalgia associated with the brand, but because the new RDM will be as far as you can get from the old on every level.

The new RDM – which was launched in late Octobe 2014r – will be online only; not print. It will not break news but will focus on opinion and analysis. It won’t even be original content. It will republished content from across the Times Media group from titles such as the Sunday Times, Business Day and the Financial Mail – essentially an aggregator.

The reason for this is that the new RDM needs to work smart because sustainable online revenue is still elusive in this country.

Besides RDM editor Ray Hartley – who is a former Sunday Times editor – there will be few staff members because the content will already be subbed and the existing Times Media online staff will be involved. While keeping costs down, Times Media CEO Andrew Bonamour told Grubstreet recently, the aim is to add another string to the advertising bow that includes Times Media’s existing print, online and broadcasting offerings.

Hartley – who was the launch editor of The Times newspaper, which had a big digital push in the beginning – is himself cautious about the revenue prospects.

“However, it will be a very top-end offering. We will be able to at least define this market pretty closely so advertisers will have a very good idea of who we’re talking to. Whether or not that will lead to revenue, I don’t know.”

Does Hartley see RDM as a direct competitor to Daily Maverick, which was launched in 2009?

“Yes, and no. They do publish in the thought-leadership space and so do we but (Times Media) has been publishing in this space for some time. This is an attempt to do it in a slightly smarter way.

“I also think there’s a lot of room in the thought-leadership space because South Africans are very interested in the political story as it unfolds and in this kind of thoughtful content, and in business. I think business will be one of our strengths because we will have the Financial Mail, Business Day and Business Times thought-leadership stuff in one place… Although we will have a bit of lifestyle content as well and motoring and sport. We have some very good sports columnists – people like BBK and Telford Vice.”

Daily Maverick CEO Styli Charalambous told Grubstreet that he didn’t see RDM as a direct competitor.

“It’s competition in the sense that anything that competes for the time of our readers and for advertising budgets is but in terms of strict editorial competition, I don’t think so.

“We focus all our resources and energies on producing original feature-length content. The Rand Daily Mail seems to be more of an aggregator of content.”

He added that Daily Maverick has a distinct voice because editor Branko Brkic is so hands-on with the content and writers while he believes Hartley might have a difficult job establishing a unique voice for the RDM because the content will come from across the group.

There won’t be a paywall on the RDM at launch, says Hartley, and there may be an app in the future but he is wary of the experience of The New York Times’s “NYT Opinion” app, that was cut recently because it failed to gain enough audience.

“You’ve got to be very careful. NYT Opinion illustrates the problem that if you load up big costs upfront, you’re setting yourself up for difficulty online because there are no guarantees that you will get the revenue to recoup those costs.

“We are playing it the other way around. We want to establish a revenue stream and then perhaps be expansive otherwise you offer something and then you disappoint your audience by suddenly stopping it or cutting back.

“I do think that one of the beauties of online is that it is scalable. There is a minimum cost that is attached to starting a newspaper whereas with online, you can publish and if the revenue and the audience justifies it, you can scale up quite easily. You don’t have to reinvent your product.”

Charalambous was strident in the recently released State of the Newsroom 2014 report about the growth of digital advertising in SA being held back because of the larger publishers who have been unwilling to embrace digital wholeheartedly.

In the RDM, he says, he sees more of a commercial exercise than a real investment in digital.

“From my understanding of it, it’s a commercial repackaging exercise. But look, it’s not a zero-sum game. If it starts carving out more of a space for analysis and opinion in the marketplace – in terms of what media planners look at – then that’s great for us as well.”

RDM will be offering what proved to be one of the most popular features of NYT Opinion – the ability to follow particular writers so that you get alerts when a new piece by them is published.

“In the thought-leadership space, writers have audiences,” says Hartley. “We have some people who are, I think, a must-read. If you follow politics, you want to know when someone like S’Thembiso Msomi writes a piece.”

Hartley – a highly respected political commentator in his own right – will also be writing original content for the RDM, as will some of the other senior editorial people in Times Media, he says.

There is no resistance from other Times Media editors to the Rand Daily Mail’s republishing of their content, he says.

“This is content which is being a little buried online so all this is doing is bringing it to the surface and making it more accessible in one web site.”

What does he think of the quality of opinion writing in SA today?

“A lot of daily newspapers have abdicated this space and produce speeches by ministers and stuff like that as thought leadership, which with due respect to the ministers has to be taken with a pinch of salt… But it has grown online and I think that’s because the news in ubiquitous.

“It’s everywhere – any number of news websites will give you the Sapa story of the day – so what’s original and fresh is clever thinking about the news. There’s this torrent of information and (as a consumer) you want people to help you navigate it – you want people who can take you through to the essence of it.”

South Africa’s leading media commentator, Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) offers intelligence on media, old and new. Reprinted from her site Grubstreet. This piece was published first on Journalism.co.za, the website of Wits University’s journalism school.

— MarkLives’ round-up of top ad and media industry news and opinion in your mailbox every Monday and Thursday. Sign up here!