General vs niche publishing

There`s an interesting media phenomenon that takes place primarily on the Internet. I don`t really think there`s a "technical" term for it - it is the proliferation of niche publishing at the expense of general news. For the past year or two, there`s been a general assumption that says: "On the Internet, audiences don`t want general information aimed at everyone, but rather niche information for small interest groups."

We have overlooked the need for solid aggregate content portals with generic, generally applicable and useful news.

This is based on a set of assumptions around the Internet`s alleged ability to exactly target who`s who with precisely designed information tailored to their needs. Certainly, this phenomenon can also increasingly be observed in the world of paper-based publishing: general news magazines are beginning to disappear, while an increasing number of niche interest publications cater to more specialised information needs. But there`s no media space as affected by this as the Internet. It`s become a truism.

I contend, though, that perhaps we`re overlooking a basic need in our efforts to publish in an ever more focused way: especially in South Africa, there are only two content hubs that come to mind that actually make an effort to publish general political and social news (the Mail and Guardian, and iafrica.com). All other local content publishers concentrate, with varying degrees of success, on niche markets, assuming that international trends can be carried over into South Africa with the same degree of success.

However, consideration should be given to the size of the local market. While in North America, for instance, a successful niche site still caters to many tens of thousands, a South African one is unlikely to have a readership large enough to warrant the significant investment that any Web requires to be moderately successful. The South African dream of competing on an international scale (really, the dream of any Internet content provider worldwide) is unlikely to be believable in most cases, as chances are that international audiences won`t seek out niche publishers based in what many think of as the "information backwater" at the tip of Africa.

As a consequence of this odd picture of the market, we have overlooked the need for solid aggregate content portals with generic, generally applicable and useful news. Consumers, and I think that most Internet users are primarily consumers (businesspeople only as a "second pass"), want to start with general reports about both pleasant and unpleasant things that are happening in their immediate surroundings. This would explain why television news, for instance, might appear dull and uninteresting to many - its deliberate refusal to "go niche" is important. Advertising revenues, in television terms still the only measurement of success, are up to twice as high during prime time news broadcasts as at any other time.

International generic news aggregators on the Web have realised this and put it to good use: Microsoft`s http://home.microsoft.com, Yahoo!`s http://my.yahoo.com, CNN`s online version at http://www.cnn.com and many others immediately come to mind. South African Net users typically complain that the news at these sites has such a fiercely North American bent - but come on, a market of going on 100 million culturally and linguistically homogenous Internet users speaks for itself. These sites, in short, aren`t aimed at South Africans right now.

I think that South African Web publishers would do good to investigate building a more generic base of news portals that cater to every, and any, vanilla news need. Niche publishing can really only be successful on a strong basis consisting of a functional "feed" of basic news. Otherwise, I believe, the Web will begin to create a picture in people`s minds of a reality that will at best be questionable.