The International News Media Association (INMA) Africa Media Summit, a prominent gathering of media industry professionals from across Africa, kicked off on Thursday with the executive director and chief executive Earl Wilkinson highlighting international news media’s focus on three big issues: how to grow audience, how to grow brand, and how to grow revenue.
The summit serves as a platform for sharing knowledge, insights and strategies related to the evolving landscape of the media industry on the continent and beyond. The two-day summit brings together key stakeholders, including publishers, editors, journalists, advertisers, technology providers, and other experts in the field.
In his opening address, Wilkinson said the aim was to make journalism more than sustainable. “What we try to do is focus on communities and passion subjects, and certainly generative artificial intelligence (AI) is one of those subjects.
“INMA is a community of about 21 000 members in 91 countries today. We’re the fastest-growing press association in the world and a lot of it is because we’re down to earth, we’re practical, and we’re at I think the the cutting edge of this digital revolution,” he said.
Wilkinson said what the Covid-19 pandemic had done for the industry and what the industry had done as a result was accelerate the shift from print to digital or legacy to digital. “We’ve embraced work from home, and there’s a pushback right now that’s going on a tug-of-war.
“We’ve repositioned things like data and product and people and talent to the front of the house … We’re retraining our newsroom to understand content economics because it’s in their best interest and yes, this pandemic reduced the plant runway,” he said.
He also touched on the big trends in media, including macro trends, noting that whether it was news avoidance, or weaponised misinformation, a new bipolar global infrastructure was beginning to emerge.
Among the hottest topics that were covered was generative AI personalisation with trust as a cornerstone.
Wilkinson said with digital transformation 3.0, media houses worldwide were digitising other pieces of their business. “And in that way, we’re very similar to other industries. I think there’s a very broad, diverse group of people at today’s meeting. I say that newspapers are further along in this transformation, but folks, television, and radio broadcasters are catching up, magazines are catching up.”
He said all news media would be digital legacy newspapers, legacy magazines, legacy radio legacy television, and all would converge in one space. “And we’re going to start using terms like text media, image media, audio media, video media.”
Meanwhile, chairman of Independent Media, Dr Iqbal Survé, said the focus on growing audience, brand, and revenue reflected the evolving priorities of news media.
He said as the industry was undergoing a digital revolution, the acceleration from print to digital has become evident, with the pandemic further propelling this shift.
“Embracing digital transformation and repositioning key elements such as data, product, and talent is essential for success. Generative AI personalisation with trust as a foundation has emerged as a crucial topic of discussion.
“Overall, media houses worldwide are digitising various aspects of their businesses, converging legacy formats into a unified digital space.
“While the South African print media industry is very gloomy and facing its biggest crisis ever, there is excitement in the industry in general as we are witnessing a convergence of text media, image media, audio media, and video media,” Survé said.
The media as an industry that is focused so much on digital transformation, generative AI may actually be the next step in the transformation of digital.
Wilkinson said: “You are a part of a business in an industry where institutions matter, democracy matters, journalism matters, the business of journalism matters, and frankly, the business choices that you make.”