If, in privatizing Omniva, the government fails to create a system that also ensures the delivery of journalism, a large share of 200,000 readers will be left exposed to rumors, propaganda, and direct information operations by hostile actors — without anything to counterbalance them, says Hans Väre.
Over my past 14 years as editor-in-chief of Sakala, one of my main tasks has been to find balance between the print newspaper and its online version. How do you use newsroom resources so that both formats are high quality and can make the most of their respective strengths? How do you develop the web in a way that doesn’t saw off the very branch the print edition is sitting on? How do you make it clear to subscribers that the print paper is good — but the web is even better? These are the questions newspaper people around the world grapple with.
My job would have been much easier if the predictions made more than 20 years ago — that printed journalism was about to disappear — had come true. But no such luck. Print circulations are indeed declining, yet most publications are holding on more stubbornly than John McClane in Nakatomi Plaza. True, Eesti Päevaleht and Äripäev have shut down their print editions, but these are exceptional cases, each with specific reasons that cannot be generalized to the rest of the press.
Our country, our education system, banking, everyday communication, and even love affairs have long since moved online. Artificial intelligence is now coating all of this with a new, frightening yet deceptively alluring layer of fool’s gold.
The feeling that nobody really needs these outdated print newspapers anymore easily gains ground among decision-makers — because decision-makers themselves live online. Yet even though the direction of the fourth industrial revolution is irreversible, its actual reach so far is somewhat misleading, like many things on the internet.
Taken together, Estonia’s print newspapers still have at least 200,000 readers. Two hundred thousand. Half of Tallinn. Two Tartus. More than four Viljandi counties. Two hundred thousand people are not a couple of blades of grass on the asphalt that can be run over without noticing; they are a large tree lying across the road—something that requires slowing down and dealing with it.
The government’s decision in early April to privatize Omniva suggests, at least initially, that the state sees print newspaper readers as blades of grass — or at best, small twigs.
In itself, the government’s desire to optimize costs is understandable. In fact, the state should operate as efficiently as possible. It is also self-evident that the state should not compete with private enterprise where competition functions naturally — such as in the parcel delivery market — and should sell off assets it does not need.
The privatization of Omniva has been discussed for a long time, but over the past year it became clear that a decision was imminent. The company that many still know as Eesti Post was put into shape like a fitness athlete before an important competition. Every excess gram had to be trimmed away, and the legal body trained into peak condition to appeal to buyers.
Unfortunately, this meant that post offices in county centers were moved to the outskirts of towns, where separate rent did not have to be paid but where customers also failed to show up. Where the law did not explicitly require it, post offices were closed entirely — including, even in Tallinn, the only post office in the Kristiine shopping center area. A large number of postal access points were also closed, even though they operated inside other businesses, and many of them could have remained open without any additional cost to Omniva.
What looks attractive and profitable to a buyer may not be so at all to the seller — because in this case, the seller is not the government but the Estonian state and its people. Including those 200,000 print newspaper readers who are very difficult, and largely even impossible, to convert to digital consumption, despite long-standing efforts by newspapers to do so.
In March, when Sakala celebrated the 148th anniversary of its founding, we offered all print subscribers free access to Sakala and the entire Postimees digital package for 148 days. One hundred forty-eight days is almost half a year—far longer than the short trial periods typically advertised to attract new readers. Only two percent of subscribers accepted the offer. In other words: those who are willing to consume journalism online already do so for the most part, and the vast majority of print readers do not switch to the internet even when it is offered to them for free.
Reading the government’s press release announcing the privatization of Omniva, one might superficially get the impression that at least for now everything will continue as before, since Omniva is obligated to provide universal postal service until 2029.
Unfortunately, the widely held belief that journalism is included in the universal postal service is incorrect. Periodicals were indeed one of the three categories covered by the universal postal service until early 2008, but were then removed from the list. At present, the law only obligates consistent, high-quality delivery at reasonable prices throughout Estonia for letters and for parcels weighing under 20 kilograms that are sent as registered or insured items.
If, in privatizing Omniva, the government fails to create a system that ensures the delivery of journalism under these conditions, a large share of 200,000 people will be left in the sphere of influence of rumors, propaganda, and deliberately malicious information operations—without anything to counterbalance them. True, public broadcasting is freely accessible to all, but it can never, either geographically or in terms of thematic scope, cover the entire part of Estonia that is currently served by county newspapers and national print dailies.
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