Challenges and Opportunities of Print Media Practice in Rwanda in Digital Era

This study on the challenges and opportunities of print media practice in Rwanda focusing the newspapers operating in Kigali City from 2017 to 2020 aimed at assessing the situation of newspapers in Rwanda in digital era. It was mainly conducted to analyze the viability of newspapers by assessing their challenges as well as their opportunities. Its specific objectives wereto analyse the regularity of the publication of the print newspapers operating in Kigali City, to identify the different challenges faced by the print newspapers operating in Kigali City, to show the impact of new technologies on print media and point out the different opportunities of the print newspapers operating in Kigali City. The sample size of this study was 32 newspapers where two employees from each newspaper participated as respondents. We used documentation, interview and questionnaire to collect the necessary data. Findings of this research showed that daily newspapers were perceived as the most respectful of their periodicity of publication as indicated by 92.2% of the respondents, followed by the monthly ones as stated 73.4%. On the third place are weekly ones as confirmed by 35.9% and lastly came the bi-monthly ones as showed by 26.7% of the respondents. The same findings revealed that the irregularity of newspapers in Kigali city were caused by financial issues at 95.3%, lack of advertisement at 89.1%, insufficient houses of publication at 81.3% and censorship at 56.3%. The challenges faced by the newspapers in Kigali City mostly revolved around advertiser and investor interference at 93.7%, poor and monotony content at 92.2% and high cost of production at 89.1%. Assessing the impact of new technologies on print media in Kigali City, the positive impacts of new technology were: facilitation of news gathering with 98.4%, improved newspapers layout at 93.6%, increase of production and flow of information at 81.3% and efficiency in production at 73.4%. However newspapers in Kigali city have been seriously impacted negatively by this new technology in such way that the number of readers decreased as stated by 96.9% of the respondents, advertisers relayed on dynamic online advertising space at 95.3%, and they made newspapers outcompeted with current online publishers as indicated 93.8%. The opportunities for newspapers are the quick internet access at 98.4%, the availability of sources of information at 90.6%, the legal framework where they had access to information law as declared by 23.4% of the respondents, higher learning institutions teaching journalism at12.5% and also, the goodwill of investors in media landscape in Rwanda stated by 4.7% of the respondents.