South Africa: Money and the art of ‘lifestyle’ reporting [opinion]

To report on the World Cup without putting Fifa before it, is not only incorrect — Fifa owns the event and its trademarked title — but is likely to have Sepp Blatter red-carding any media outlet stupid enough to perpetrate such a foul. They have put millions into the event, the least we can do is call it by its proper name.

 

Obviously things are different when talking about the Klein Karoo Kunstefees, the Joy of Jazz Festival or WineX. These may be major South African cultural events, but the sponsors who, like Fifa, own the brand, aren’t really that important, are they? Well yes, actually they are.

 

And they’re Absa , Standard Bank and RMB for those who aren’t sure. And if you aren’t sure, it’s probably not your fault, because according to the Artstrack Research 2009, undertaken and its results presented by Business and Arts SA , 24% of media “never mention the sponsor’s name” in arts and cultural editorial. Oops.

 

Described as “a comprehensive report on the attitudes of the corporate sector, the general public and the media towards arts and culture in SA”, the results are based on nearly 2000 one-on-one interviews with the business world, business sponsors of the arts, artists and the public, and record attitudes towards and awareness of sponsors; look at the size of the arts and culture sponsorship market; and record the role of media .

 

Arts sponsorship has more than doubled since 2001 and sits at about R360m. If only the business world’s patronage of media was as productive, we might be able to actually write about arts, culture, heritage and the like — all those things business pointedly says we’re overlooking.

 

More arts sponsorship is coming from marketing rather than social investment budgets, largely because business is learning to appreciate its marketing, branding, social goodwill and, sometimes, financial value .

 

The success of SA’s Design Indaba is well documented, not just because South African design is one of our most coveted cultural exports , but because last year the Indaba’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) was nearly R192m. The Absa Klein Karoo Kunstefees left behind more than R95m in the Klein Karoo last year.

 

As SA’s culture — which includes our world-renowned wines, food and theatre productions — is one of the few areas in which GDP is growing as our manufacturing and mining industries struggle, the lack of coverage can be attributed to one thing: anything that falls into that tenuously defined area of “lifestyle” is not considered a legitimate area of reportage.

 

Until the media realises it needs to support culture as well as the brands who sponsor it, we become part of the problem business has with arts sponsorship . But really, it’s not our fault. And it can be rectified with a little mutual back-scratching.

 

As the recession hit, the first media area to be scaled down or discarded entirely was lifestyle. Despite arts and culture being considered essential on all sorts of social levels to a country’s wellbeing, papers and magazines have dropped their arts coverage without a second thought in the past year.

 

This is why: they didn’t get support from business for those sections. The arts need business sponsorship; business needs media support of its art sponsorships; and the media needs the support of business to give arts and culture the coverage it deserves. The first of these parameters, according to Artstrack , is on the increase. The second and third are failing miserably.

 

All companies canvassed in the research felt that “arts and culture should generate better media exposure in the future”. Business may see value in sponsoring arts and culture, but until it can see the value in supporting the media’s exposure of those areas, they cannot complain about us not playing our part.

 

I meet many businesses ruing the demise of arts coverage in mainstream media while ignoring their complicity in it. The media, like every other business, bled when the recession hit .

 

Unfortunately, arts, culture and all the other “noncore” areas are not seen as a paper’s lifeblood, just as they aren’t seen as the life force of big business. But without addressing the three- way street that is arts, business and media, cultural coverage in newspapers will continue to be anaemic.

 

- February 18, 2010 by Katy Chance

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 Source: www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx (accessed on 19.02.2010)