Survival or sustainability? Contributions of innovatively managed news ventures to the future of Egyptian journalism

ABSTRACT

In the repressive political climate prevailing in Egypt in 2013–15, news ventures aspiring to high standards of reporting were forced to innovate. This paper analyses three Egyptian start-ups that experimented with novel revenue streams and news services during that period, to gain insights into their approaches to managing journalism. In the process, it compares different criteria for assessing sustainability and concludes that, in adverse political environments, narrow economic measures of profitability and survival may give a misleading picture as to the sustainability of the kind of journalism conducive to democratic practice. Operating collaboratively, transparently, and ethically may slow productivity and profitability in the short term while laying stronger foundations for durable relations among media teams, as well as with readers and advertisers, in the long run.

KEYWORDS:

• Profitability
• revenue
• advertising
• readership
• ethics
• collaboration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There were nine journalists in jail in March 2015, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ, 2015).

2. Examples include Cairo Times, which closed in the early 2000s under persistent political pressure from state censors, and Daily News Egypt, whose owners sold the title in 2012, under the economic pressures created by a downturn in advertising after the 2011 uprising (Sakr, 2013, p. 18).

3. Sahafet means “newspapers”. Welad Elbalad roughly translates as “local community”.

4. Mantiqti means “my neighbourhood”.

5. Mada means “span” or “range”. Masr means “Egypt”.

6. Because the printing house refuses to print the papers with a cover price, citing legal complications, the price is stamped on after printing.

7. The name Mantiqti Wust el-Balad (Mantiqti Downtown) was introduced from Issue 10. The venture started out as Mantiqti el-Borsa (referring specifically to the area around the Stock Exchange).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Naomi Sakr

Naomi Sakr is Professor of Media Policy at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, UK, and former Director of the CAMRI Arab Media Centre. She is the author of Transformations in Egyptian Journalism (2013), Arab Television Today (2007), and Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East (2001), has edited two collections, Women and Media in the Middle East: Power through Self-Expression (2004) and Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life (2007), and co-edited a third, Arab Media Moguls (2015).