“In the most developed countries in the world journalists are most expected to be multi-skilled and be able to blog, podcast and work on the websites… if you want to keep your job as a journalist you will have to be much more tech- savvy and willing to work in a multi-skilled way,” argues Prof Harry Dugmore, the MTN Chair of Media and Mobile Communication at the Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies.

Experts across the world agree with Dugmore that the death of traditional media is imminent unless there is drastic change in their modus operandi.

According to Prof Harry Dugmore, upcoming journalists must embrace new media technology (online and mobile reporting) to survive because newspapers are increasingly becoming redundant.

Worldwide wave

“…We have seen throughout the world, including in Africa, newspapers for example rapidly becoming redundant and circulations falling very very fast… you are seeing more people accessing newspapers via laptops and cell phone because it is much more instant, much more rich (in a sense that you have many different perspectives) and it is much much cheaper than buying a newspaper,” says Dugmore.

According to a study by Internews Europe, titled The Promise of Ubiquity-Mobile as a Media Platform in the Global South, growth of mobile phone reach is a threat to traditional media, just as the Internet has been—and on a larger scale in developing countries.

The study predicts mobile telephony to be the world’s first universal communications platform— one that is getting there faster than anyone expected. Its major path of growth, reveals the study, is now in the global South, where the mobile is not just a phone but a global address, a transaction device, and an identity marker for hundreds of millions of poor people.

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