Last week Newsclip hosted KZN-based clients, public relations practitioners and those with a vested interest in the media, at talks about understanding the media.

The talks, held at ICESA City Campus in Pietermaritzburg, as well as jointly hosted presentations with PRISA in Durban and Richards Bay, were presented by Alma Maxwell of Newsclip Durban and Newsclip’s editor, Daniel Munslow.

“KwaZulu-Natal is a unique media environment with specific niche markets that public relations professionals need to address. The province is extremely rich in radio and in community press. To effectively reach any given market, communicators need to understand the media that is around them. They need to understand the market for their product, the audience of the media and the profile of the audience the selected media car reach”, says Munslow.

With specific reference to KZN, Maxwell adds, “I have, on occasion called clients letting them know they were in one of the province’s top dailies... Instead of the expected response, they first say, ‘but what about the page three mention in my community newspaper?’ I don’t get that from other provinces. People’s regard for their local community paper is amazing”.

The recent Compass24 survey of the Media24 community papers offers some explanation of this response... Over 75% of all community newspaper readers use the publications to make purchase decisions and consciously survey their surroundings. In a time of economic tightening, interest rate increases, and soaring petrol and diesel costs, it is natural for people to take a greater interest in which is around them.

The talk also raised some eyebrows with regards to the media that is available. There are in fact over
1 050 magazines current distributed in South Africa. There are also over 500 newspapers, including dailies, weeklies, weekend and community press. As for KZN specifically, there are approximately 74 community newspapers and over 40 other newspapers published throughout the province. This represents a huge selection of communication channels. Therefore one needs to keep media understanding and market awareness in mind.

Newsclip also presented its latest offering, Target Media, to the communicators, who responded positively to this new media database. It features all South African media, complete with contact details, profiles, demographics and more. Being web-based, it offers information on the move. It also contains the famous myList and myContacts features, which allow planners to add their own personal contact details at various publications, and create a personalised campaign listing with selected media from the main database.

Munslow also noted the importance of new media, and highlighted the success of East Coast Radio, which scooped several awards at the recent SA Blog Awards.