The Adoption Of New Media Technologies By The Namibian Print Media: A Case Study Of The New Era And The Namibian Newspaper

Abstract

This study investigated the strategies employed by newspapers in Namibia to adopt new media technologies in their daily operations with a specific focus on New Era and The Namibian newspaper. The study also assessed how the print media has adopted new media technologies and examined how new media technologies have changed operations of news organisations. Using a qualitative method in the form of a case study, a non-probability sampling technique was used to purposively select the sample from New Era and The Namibian newspaper. The sampling quota included one managing editor, one marketing manager, one Information Technology (IT) manager, and six journalists, from each newspaper. The total number of participants in this study was 18. The study revealed that media practitioners from the two newspapers all acknowledge the need to adopt new media technologies, within their operations and appreciated opportunities of being able to reach their audience on different platforms, other than the hard copy newspaper. Furthermore, the study revealed both newspapers have aggressively implemented online newspapers (E-paper), as a complimentary platform for their print editions, websites and mobile applications. The study also found that despite the flexibility in operation that is presented by new media technologies to the journalists, they now face challenges of competing for news with citizen journalists, which forces newspaper journalist to be more creative in their writing and also maintain credibility. The study concluded that newspapers in the country are gradually adopting new media technologies, with different platforms that align with the telecommunication infrastructure in the country. The study thus recommends that news organisation create more awareness on the platforms they have implemented, in order to attract interest from the audiences, to be able to explore such platforms.