Ali Balunywa in Kampala, Uganda
Robert Kabushenga is the Chief Executive Officer of the New Vision Group of Companies. The New Vision Group is the biggest multimedia house in Uganda. It publishes 8 newspapers and 5 magazines. It owns 3 FM radio stations and a television network. (www.newvision.co.ug).
I spoke to Robert in his offices at the New Vision headquarters in industrial area in Kampala at the end of May 2009. The appointment was made towards the end of my research on the impact of the digital culture on the print media in Uganda
Robert was very passionate while speaking about the new media. He actually congratulated me on my choice of research. According to him, the media’s operational aspect of content generation is to share information, acquire physical networks and have the ability to store data. With this, the possibility of real time access to what is happening elsewhere is possible
To Robert, the New Media has helped the New Vision to leap frog literally from manual to digital technologies in a short time. The technology revolution has closed the digital gap in the last 10 years. The new vision’s digital use is now at the same level as Europe or America. The speed might not be the same in terms of infrastructure, but the tools are similar. He gave an example of owning cars everywhere, but the West has good roads, yet the south has poor ones
In terms of efficiency and convenience of operations, the new media has gone a long way in ameliorating working conditions at the New Vision, according to Robert. Regarding hardware, he talked of how the computers and mobile phones had eased communications especially in this part of the world.
He added that the development of the digital camera had made sharing, transmitting and taking photographs easy. Before, the photo developing and printing process was constrained by use of films and long time taken to get the end product, which had to be scanned and fed into the newspaper layout process.
The new Media has also made it possible for the media houses to be truly multimedia. There is so much content generated, but most of it goes unused because there is not enough space to use it all. With new media, the capacity to absorb all content is increased many times over.
Robert added that the new media has had a liberating impact on the media in Uganda and has also freed innovation. Business has for example shifted from being only a newspaper to a multimedia house, which includes online and hand held devices for delivering content.
To facilitate this shift, the price of the computer has come down nearly one-third the cost of a typewriter. This has had a big impact on gathering, processing and producing news content. For journalism it has also had a positive impact on the financial side of investing in the media. This is manifested in the way, the New Vision shares were oversubscribed when they floated them on the local bourse.
Meetings dominate Robert’s typical day. This is the culture of the New Vision and in this part of the world. Decision-making is consensual. All management must own a decision in order to effectively execute their duties. To Robert, the best way to coordinate different facets of group professionals to get the best content outcome is through meetings.
Competition is rife among the different sections of the group. The finance, editorial, marketing and broadcasting sections have all to be well coordinated to produce their products without clashing.
Robert like all other senior staff is on call 24/7. He starts his day quite early and finishes late. By 8.00am he is in office, at 12.30 goes home to have lunch with the family and returns by 2.00pm. He leaves office art around 8.00pm.
The administrative work of the New Vision is accomplished using new media. Foe example, all company records are now in soft form. Minutes in meetings are typed on a laptop as the meeting is proceeding and are circulated immediately after the meeting. Even those who fail to attend the meeting are instantly updated on what transpired.
More information is shared in advance to ease decision-making and to make contributions to meetings more informative. New Media has made the processing and distribution of information in advance much easier. Even if people are unavailable physically, they continue being involved in decision-making.
All the group’s financial transactions are now made online. With or without bank signatories’ physical presence payments can be made despite the inaptness of the bandwidth. Still however, the New Vision has the largest bandwidth in Uganda. And hopefully, this national problem will be sorted out before the end of the year with the completion of the undersea cables.
Mobile money technology has also made payments much easier. People in the rural areas who wish to advertise or distributors remitting money to the New Vision can use mobile money to pay the New Vision. Advertisers too can send their adverts by mobile telephone texts or SMS.
New Vision can also make payment to its contributors, writers and correspondents in the rural areas using the same system. Mobile money is a money transfer service being operated by the two biggest mobile telephone companies, MTN and Zain.
In spite of New Vision being the leader in ICT use in the media industry, it was with great regret that face book; twitter and you tube were disconnected. They used to slow up the whole system and make the journalists lazy to do their work and instead waste time on those social networking sites.
In the spirit of embracing the new media, all senior staff at the New Vision was provided with a company Blackberry telephone handset. Middle level management staff is also furnished with a company telephone and credit. All these people are supposed to be in touch 24 /7. Breaking news can be coordinated as it is happening by telephone or email.
In conclusion, the New Vision wishes to do it the Rupert Murdoch way of having a strong presence on every media platform in Uganda. No wonder Robert and Rupert rhyme!
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