South Africa's 250 'invisible' grassroots newspapers finally have a unified voice with the establishment of the Association of Independent Publishers of Southern Africa (AIPSA). The new regional umbrella body was established at a national conference in the country's commercial capital, Johannesburg, on 18 September 2004 after almost one year of heated debate between splinter groups of rural and community-based publishers.

The negotiations, partially funded by NiZA, helped publishers jettison conglomerate-owned newspapers from the 126-year-old Community Press Association (CPA), and then merge the moribund organisation with the more radical Independent Media Alliance (IMA) lobby group.

The new association was immediately accepted as a constituent member of the country's most powerful media association, Print Media South Africa (PMSA), and has already won funding for South Africa's first nationwide 'census' into rural, township, and grassroots publications.

The association is initially comprised almost exclusively of South African publishers, but as both its predecessors were regional SADC bodies we're opted to keep the doors open for rapid growth into southern Africa. AIPSA will however only begin actively recruiting outside of South African once it has established its secretariat, its web portal, and a small number of tangible member services.


Aggressive headhunt

Preliminary AIPSA research indicates that the sector is a hotbed of innovation, with entrepreneurial publishers using everything from second-hand photocopiers to small hand-operated presses to publish an array of micro (A5) and mini (A4) newsletters, as well as more traditional tabloid size newspapers. Virtually none of these grassroots publications are donor funded, instead surviving on advertising revenue and subscriptions alone.

Some of the more unorthodox innovations include using HIV/AIDS home-based care councillors to distribute newspapers deep into rural villages where there are literally no roads - and so beating better funded mainstream newspapers.

Although the newspapers have managed to survive and even thrive without donor or other institutional support, increasing numbers of publishers are now finding themselves the victims of their own success: the cash-flush conglomerate media has begun to aggressively headhunt the most skilled and innovative journalists and editors, offering salaries up to six times what the grassroots media can afford.

The resulting brain drain, from newspapers that operate with tiny staff structures, has crippled some of South Africa's most outspoken rural media. The only way to fight back, publishers believe, is to strengthen the commercial viability of their surviving publications.


'Idiot guide'

AIPSA was created to embrace this spirit of entrepreneurial enterprise, and is urgently designing a series of free Open Source (OS) software tools, 'idiot guide' manuals, management toolkits, and technological aids as flagship projects. The OS software includes specialised distribution/circulation and editorial management tools, as well as automated salary payroll, budgeting, and tax-calculation tools, and is meant to ‘level the playing fields’ by mirroring the expensive proprietary tools used by the conglomerate media.

The ‘idiot guide’ manuals will meanwhile help publishers refine their market research, advertising, circulation, and editorial strategies through a series of step-by-step exercises, while the management toolkits will help publishers produce marketing and advertising sales kits equivalent to those used by competing conglomerate media.

AIPSA also intends becoming South Africa's primary clearinghouse for research, policy debate, and the setting of industry standards for the grassroots media sector as part of its mandate to aggressively lobby on behalf of the sector.


Advertising procurement

Registered as a non-profit association, AIPSA has already spearheaded successful highlevel campaigns against State-funded newspapers that undermine the small independent publications by using State resources to undercut their distribution, poach advertisers, and headhunt staff. AIPSA's intervention derailed attempts to restructure the State-funded newspapers so that they could in future also qualify for donor funding.

Other successful AIPSA lobby campaigns since September 2004 include reforming discriminatory police information policies towards small newspapers right across South Africa, and also developing strategies for improving the access of grassroots publishers to national advertising.

Perhaps more importantly though, AIPSA is set to launch a feasibility study into the viability of a proposed national advertising procurement agency. The envisioned non-profit agency will specifically service grassroots newspapers, finally giving them the collective muscle enjoyed by the multinational conglomerates that dominate South Africa's media industry.


Ego-stroking

As a first step, NiZA has helped AIPSA commission a comprehensive database-driven web portal to showcase grassroots media to advertisers, to give access to individual publications, and to showcase credible market research proving the effectiveness of such media.

And, to help reward the sector's often unsung heroes, AIPSA is also championing the creation of South Africa's Innovative Media Awards. The awards are intended as more than just another ego-stroking exercise, and therefore avoid cash-handouts -- and will instead seek to pragmatically assist winning entrepreneurs to capitalise on their innovations by providing technical training, sponsored onsite mentors/management consultants, scholarships with better resourced media, or even brokering long-term 'twinning' agreements with better resourced media to build capacity and sustainability.

Detailed information on AIPSA's programmes and individual members can be obtained from its NiZA funded website, set to launch in February 2005, at www.independentpublisher.org

Justin Arenstein is founding editor of southern Africa's only independent investigative news agency, African Eye News Service, and is currently interim president of AIPSA. justin@africanpress.com