Mark Weinberg, Print Media Diversity Fund

I think the first point that needs to be made is, I've been asked to come and represent the Print Media Diversity Forum but the forum itself is more of a negotiating chamber and is not homogenous. I come from the National Community Media Forum and I' going to do my best to try and represent the Forum' positions, but what I want to do is pull out some of the more controversial issues that have risen in the Forum and in doing that, I'l do my best to try and represent the other members of the Forum's positions and not give undue privilege to those of the National Community Media Forum.

For those who aren't aware, late last year the IMDT convened a workshop of stakeholders in the print media sector. That workshop was to look at how we would go about creating an enabling environment for print media. Out of that workshop came a very broad and general consensus that it was in the interests broadly, of all stakeholders, to embark on such a project and a steering committee which is what we were calling the Print Media Diversity Forum was established, basically consisting of three stakeholder groups. Print Media South Africa, the PMSA, which represents a large monopoly capital, the commercial interest in the sector. IPASA, the Independent Publishers of South Africa which represents the small commercial publisher. Township Publications and the likes, and then the NCMF, National Community Media Forum, representing community and democratic media.

The steering committee's mandate that arose from the initial workshop was to look at how we go about creating a structure that will serve six areas that we identified. Those were -

• the provision of seed capital to new and emerging media;
• accessing training;
• preferential access to printers, papers and distribution networks;
• some kind of instrument that would create an avenue for advertising to get into these smaller publications.

To briefly try and highlight what those were -

Initially, the industry was very interested in low cost ad hoc approach, an approach that emphasised twinning of projects where a small project would come and share premises with one of their publications and learn managerial skills that way; in-house training and the likes.

And of course from an NCMF / IPASA perspective the very opposite was true. We initially saw the need for some kind of legislation that would in fact lock the industry into a very realistic and fundamental contribution to the development of print in the country. We in fact were referring to these in-house training and twinning proposals as being rather the cherry on the top, but not necessarily the content of a fund or an agency. We saw the need for serious capital to be put into a fund as really being the centrepiece of any agency. And that's where we were looking for commitment from them.

I think the entire process also had an element of urgency in it where from an IPASA, and particularly and NCMF perspective, we were concerned about the time it was taking to get discussions around an MDA off the ground and we felt there was this urgency from the industry to prove themselves and to put money into the sector. And so there became a sense that we could really get some money down to projects and actually start media production which I think most of us know is one of the weaker sectors in our small media environment in our country. There is very little print compared to radio.

What came out of that steering committee then was a document which I think a lot of you attended our recent workshop and have a copy of. If you don't, you can approach me afterwards and I can give you one. It was basically a proposal for a print agency or fund that also outlined a number of areas where we failed to reach consensus. And I think because in the interests of time I'm not going to go into the detail of what we've actually agreed. I'm rather going to just quickly highlight some of the areas where we disagreed and what process, what approach we've then taken to those.

There were outspoken differences, a key one being the role of government and the legal status of a fund. The industry made it very clear that they wanted the fund to be voluntary and there should be no obligation that they didn't accept themselves. We, on the other hand, felt that there would need to be some mechanism, if not legislated, then at least judicial, that obligated the industry to support the fund, to prevent them pulling out basically whenever they felt like it.

The question of statutory versus non statutory for us also relates very essentially to the principle of independence where the proposal put forward by the industry was that all stakeholders would sit on, I think it's called a Board of Trustees or a Board of Directors, and policy in terms of allocating money and management would come from there. We felt that, that structure has insufficient independence built into it, especially in - and quite ironically they were proposing that government, who we convinced them was a major funder, should also sit on the Board of Directors. So in fact they were undermining even the limited independence that they thought they were attempting to secure. Their big fear of course is independence from government. They don't see themselves as being a potential threat to independence.

Another area that arose and it's been spoken about a lot today was the area of competition. There was a concern from other members of the committee that all the fund that the industry envisages will do, is to be almost a greenhouse for projects. It will grow little projects which they will then be in a position to take over. We've seen that happening a lot around. Caxton has a history of watching small publications grow and once they've secured a readership and a circulation, Caxton just goes in and either launches a new publication that out-competes them or starts squeezing them in terms of access to print and so on.

So we felt that some kind of anti-trust clause in a voluntary thing or a legislated anti-trust law would be essential to ensure that we actually do achieve this diversity in print media. And again, that's something that was just an outspoken difference. The industry made it clear that they wouldn't be able to sell that. Well, the PSMA made it clear that they wouldn't be able to sell that to their members who are the big publishing houses.

The next outspoken difference that we had related to the criteria of the kind of projects that would receive assistance from such a fund or such an agency. There was a clear tension between an entrepreneurial vision for media, a media that would grow markets for the corporates, that would have an entrepreneurial ethos about them. And those, one would imagine would need to be urban based in order to be within the distribution networks of larger publications and so on. Against the community, a vision which felt that projects needed to be selected more on the ground that they could offer information to communities that as of yet had no access to information. Those would be your rural and your peri-urban communities. And there again, there was no consensus except the feeling that both would have to be included. But the ratio of what would receive what kind of preferential treatment remains an outstanding issue.

Then there were other differences which I labelled as being unspoken differences. The one related to timing. And on the PMSA side there's a clear urgency to launch a fund. They want to go ahead with it, they want something concrete and our feeling is that, that relates to the threat that they perceive in this MDA process. The NCMF on the other hand is torn because while on the one hand we do want to see money hitting the ground and projects actually starting to benefit from some kind of fund, we are aware of the threat this could pose to the MDA process.

So at our most recent workshop which I think was about three weeks ago, there were members of GCIS present there and we debated this with them, in terms of time frames, and whether this fund will in fact be an impediment to the MDA process or whether it could beef it up. I think the consensus there was that the fund needed to go ahead and establish itself; however, keeping the option of an MDA open. I think the feeling that came out of the last workshop was that we will need to constantly assess what relationship this fund has with an MDA, whether it becomes the print desk of an MDA or whether it gets dissolved into an MDA. I think these are all issues that we made it very clear were still on the agenda. So by signing into this fund we made it clear we were by no means cutting ourselves off from our principle which is a broad MDA that covers all sectors and is legislated and in which government plays a much more central role than is conceived for it here.

The second unspoken difference relates to the question of money. Print Media South Africa has very generously and upfront agreed that they will cover the running costs of the fund. We did some maths and I think that came to R200 000 to R2 million a year. We also mooted from our side that running costs should be around 10% of an entire fund which means the entire fund that we would be looking at then would have R20 million a year. Where the rest of that money is going to come from isn't clear. From the PSMA side there's no signal that their members, people like the Independent Publishing Group and TML, would be at this point making any commitment to that. They see that money coming more from external donors and government, whereas from our side we see a one third, one third, one third split between the industry, government and external donors where the various parties would be asked to meet one another. So that's an outstanding difference indeed.

So as I've said, this is probably where we stand at the moment, where the last time we went back to our various constituencies at the workshop we were given the go ahead to shelve the issues of the non statutory versus statutory debate, the voluntary versus non voluntary debate, and pursue pragmatically the launching of a fund. We've been given a two-month time frame in which to come back to them with a proposal that hopefully sectors have already signed on to.

As I made clear again, we've made it clear that this in no way limits parties from engaging with broader debates around an MDA and engaging with and lobbying for an MDA. The obvious issues outstanding there then become the life span of the fund, the process of dissolution of the fund and it becomes a chicken and egg because until we know the actual nature of an MDA, only then will we be able to start looking at those processes.

So at the moment where we are is we're doing the maths in terms of the various criteria models were looking at. How much would it cost to get a rural publication of a certain size with a certain frequency and readership, off the ground and running, versus an urban equivalent. There are a number of criteria, we're doing the maths and from there we hope to have a business plan which within two months we should come and present back to our constituencies and hopefully launch a fund. I think that's basically what I've been asked to come and report on.