Newsrooms are shrinking in a tightly concentrated media market

It’s not news that print media has been decimated by online publishing, but the scale of print’s face-plant is what is surprising.

With that have come shrinking newsrooms and justifiable concerns about the quality of news being fed to South Africans.

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There’s also the entry of tech giants such as Google and Meta, both huge news aggregators, siphoning revenue away from content creators.

This may have been the beginning of the end for newsrooms.

In 2022, SA’s digital advertising market was worth an estimated R14.2 billion. However, Media24 has reported that 97% of this revenue ends up with Meta, Google, and other tech kingpins.

In November 2025, Google agreed to provide R688 million in support over five years to local media following a Competition Commission inquiry that found these digital platforms were undermining news publishers’ revenues and ability to compete.

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Meta came to a different arrangement, agreeing to provide advertising credits, training and resources for local media.

Latest insights

A new report by Open Secrets on private media ownership in SA details the evisceration of print media as news consumers move online, and as tech companies take over the internet.

Read: There’s a crisis in South African newsrooms

The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) shows that newspaper circulation in the first quarter of 2026 declined by 1.3% from the same period in 2025.

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Daily newspapers saw a 7% year-on-year decline in circulation, while weekend broadsheets fell by a staggering 17.1%.

“Ultimately, the data shows that there is a demand for newspapers in South Africa, but people are no longer willing or able to pay,” says the report.

The Star, for example, reported a total circulation of 18 752 copies, but only 3 750 were paid for, and 15 002 copies were distributed free.

Two notable exceptions to this were Business Day, which increased its circulation by 9.5%, and the weekly edition of the Daily Maverick, which grew by 21.4%.

Read: Dramatic week for South Africa’s beleaguered newspaper industry

Despite the losses in newsrooms, readers still value credible news media and journalistic reporting.

An interesting case in point is Media24, the Naspers-owned publisher of News24. According to the report, its workforce fell from 3 337 in 2020 to 1 194 in 2026, a whopping 64% reduction, with further cuts anticipated. These figures cover all staff, not just journalists.

At a time when overall trust in media is waning, News24 and eNCA both recorded an 80% trust rating in the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026.

Naspers owes at least some of its wealth and influence to an earlier era of Afrikaner nationalism, where loyalty to apartheid was rewarded with state support.

“This politics of patronage formed the basis of massive private profit and turned Naspers into a multinational technology corporation that still dominates the South African media landscape and the JSE,” says Open Secrets.

Read: Naspers mulls options for South Africa’s historic ‘City Press’

PW Botha, then leader of the Cape National Party, sat on the Naspers board from 1966 to 1977, shortly before becoming prime minister.

The company churned out school textbooks as a preferential supplier to the apartheid government while busily expanding its list of Afrikaans and English titles, including into a market aimed at a growing black readership. Naspers contributed funds to the National Party, creating a two-way flow that ensured privileged access to power.

Source: Open Secrets, Who Owns South Africa?

Sekunjalo

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In 2013, an Iqbal Survé-led consortium bought Independent Media from Ireland’s Independent News & Media for R2 billion.

The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) acquired a 25% stake for about R500 million and lent a further R800 million to help fund the Sekunjalo consortium’s 55% stake.

That deal was roundly criticised for the same kind of state patronage that gave Naspers its start in life, prompting questions and inquiries into governance at the entity charged with the management of public worker pensions.

The PIC is now trying to recover around R1 billion from the Sekunjalo Independent Media (SIM) consortium.

Earlier this year, Sekunjalo announced it would divest from Independent Media after investing R1.8 billion – an investment it said it could no longer continue.

A company called National Media Group (NMG) received licences to publish Independent Media titles, including The Star, The Argus, The Mercury and Cape Times.

Read: Independent Media’s future uncertain as Sekunjalo pulls funding plug

It’s not known if any money changed hands for these titles, or what the amounts were. This has raised questions as to whether this divestment represents any meaningful change in ownership.

Ownership

Media ownership in SA is not entirely a tool of corporate barons.

Trade union investment vehicles feature prominently, with the SA Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu) being a major shareholder in Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), owner of eMedia which in turn owns e.tv and eNCA.

The Mineworkers Investment Company is a key shareholder in Primedia, whose broadcasting interests include 702, CapeTalk, 947, Kfm and Eyewitness News.

Other prominent media owners are Arena Holdings, owned by Lebashe Investment Group, whose titles include the Sunday Times, Business Day and Sowetan (Arena also retains a minority stake in Financial Mail, after Apex acquired 70% in 2025); and Kagiso Media, owned by Kagiso Tiso Holdings, owner of East Coast Radio and Jacaranda FM, with investments in several other radio stations.

Moneyweb is wholly owned by JSE-listed African Media Entertainment (AME). Neither company’s ownership is examined in the report, although several Moneyweb articles are cited as sources.

The Open Secrets report documents instances of alleged editorial interference by owners at Independent Media, The Herald and Daily Dispatch, as well as editorial failures at Sunday Times – particularly its discredited stories about the South African Revenue Services’s rogue unit.

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Survé has denied interfering in editorial decisions at Independent Media.

Where things are headed

PwC forecasts that digital platforms will attract almost three-quarters of SA’s advertising expenditure by 2029, while combined revenue from newspapers, magazines and books continue their inevitable decline.

A key problem identified in the report is media concentration in a few hands, giving a handful of businesses considerable influence over news. This, says Open Secrets, requires greater scrutiny of ownership and financial interests.

One recommendation is for the PIC to use its influence as a major shareholder in Naspers to press for more investment in SA journalism.

The report also calls for newsrooms to forsake the profit motive but does not offer a detailed governance or financing model to replace this.

“Newsrooms must not be for profit,” it says, invoking the Windhoek Declaration where journalists demanded that newsrooms be freed from economic control and monopoly ownership.

“But 35 years after the declaration was made, it is becoming harder for newsrooms to fight back against financialisation and corporate dominance.”

The report warns that irresponsible AI use could further erode public trust in journalism (Moneyweb is among the media houses to have adopted a responsible AI use policy).

What’s needed is ethical, verified and evidence-based reporting, says Open Secrets.

Financial sustainability weighs heavily on all these recommendations, and the financial contributions from the likes of Google and Meta – while helpful – are not sufficient to staunch the bloodletting in newsrooms.

The report argues that newsrooms must be protected against interference by owners and the use of journalism to advance their business or political interests.

Providers of news deliver a public good that can easily become contaminated by the economics of sustaining a newsroom, particularly at a time when giant tech platforms gobble up most of the digital ad revenue.

Read:
The Fourth Estate fights for survival
‘Moneyweb committed its duty as the Fourth Estate’ – Acting Assistant Press Ombud

Open Secrets may have opened a useful debate, but how this resolves – and whether newsrooms will ever become not-for-profit entities – remains a moot point.

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