The official newspaper circulation figures for the last quarter of 2012 were released recently and they make dismal reading, particularly when compared with readership figures for the same quarter last year.
Anybody suggesting that there is hope for the future of the newspaper industry is clearly living in cloud cuckoo land. Which isn't to say that newspapers are about to become extinct in South Africa. They will continue to be bought by people who can't afford laptops and iPads and therein lies the real problem. A newspaper relies on advertising to survive and if your product reaches an audience with very little disposable income then what is the point of a company taking expensive space to advertise a product that nobody can afford?
Desperate times for newspaper editors call for desperate measures so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when the editor of the City Press contacted me recently and asked if I would be interested in contributing a weekly column on their opinion pages. Very few people buy a newspaper to read news that is already old by the time it has made it onto a newspaper page so, if a newspaper is to survive, there is bound to be more emphasis on the entertainment content and comment section of a newspaper, particularly if you can build a loyal readership who return every week to read their favourite writers.
For example, I look forward every Saturday to my FT Weekend, mainly because of the columnists. The same applies to The Spectator and a week without Rod Liddle, Hugo Rifkind, James Delingpole and Martin Vander Weyer is unthinkable.
I have to admit that I was rather flattered to be invited to write a regular column for the City Press and my initial reaction was to say yes. It would be one in the eye for the Sunday Times and would annoy all those minor league columnists and faux academics who had whooped with delight when the Sunday Times decided to axe the Out to Lunch column five years ago. But fortunately I came to my senses and decided that a regular column in the City Press, or indeed any newspaper is exactly what I don't need.
I have every reason to believe that the Out to Lunch column became one of the best read columns in the country during its 14 year life span. I still get approached at airports by people who tell me they stopped buying the Sunday Times the day I was sacked which suggests that the Out to Lunch brand value has been rather more resilient than the Sunday Times brand value.