For most investors, media has never been an obvious destination for capital. It is a sector defined less by predictable returns than by uncertainty, confrontation, and public scrutiny. Print media, in particular, sits at the bottom of the investment hierarchy, crowded out by faster-growing industries and burdened by declining global demand. Outside those with a journalism background or a deep ideological commitment to public discourse, few see media as a rational investment choice.
In this context, the survival—and expansion—of Media and Communications Center Plc (MCC), publisher of The Reporter, Ethiopian Reporter (Amharic), and this magazine, is more than a corporate milestone. Celebrating thirty years of operation, financed largely through newspaper sales and culminating in the construction of its own building, MCC stands as an anomaly in contemporary Ethiopian business life. In an environment where even profitable enterprises struggle to endure, this achievement borders on the improbable.
To an international audience, this may appear unremarkable. Major African media houses, such as Kenya’s Daily Nation, established institutional strength decades ago. But those successes were built on inherited capital, established conglomerates, or favorable political economies. MCC, by contrast, emerged from scratch in a country where private media had no precedent, no protective ecosystem, and no patient capital waiting in the wings.
RELATED POSTS
The difficulties began at the first gate: licensing. Print media has long lacked a clearly defined regulatory category, often treated as an appendage of broadcasting rather than as a distinct civic institution. Local authorities, particularly at woreda level, have shown little inclination to engage with its unique operational realities. What followed were familiar challenges for any newsroom—securing adequate office space, attracting and retaining capable journalists, and maintaining professional standards—all without reliable revenue streams to offset persistent losses.
The scale of the market failure is stark. In a country of roughly 120 million people, only four weekly newspapers remain in circulation. Two of them are published by a single institution. This is not merely a statistic about media decline; it is a measure of informational absence. Where newspapers disappear, so too does routine scrutiny of power, continuity of public memory, and the slow, corrective function of fact-based debate. The void left behind is not filled by social media, but by noise.
That fragility was laid bare during the Covid-19 pandemic. As economic activity slowed, advertisers across sectors cut spending sharply, and print media—by its very nature—was the first to bear the brunt. Advertising budgets migrated rapidly to digital platforms or were suspended altogether, while the fixed costs of print production remained. For newspapers already operating on thin margins, the pandemic was not merely a revenue shock but an existential test of survival.
Yet structural constraints and economic shocks tell only part of the story. Independent media in Ethiopia has also had to contend with continuous political and commercial pressure. Officials, politicians, business leaders, and investors often approach journalism as a public-relations service rather than as an accountability mechanism. When coverage diverges from this expectation, retaliation follows—sometimes through litigation, sometimes through administrative harassment, and increasingly through coordinated attacks on social media. In such an environment, neutrality is not a safe position; it is often the most exposed one.
Against this backdrop, MCC’s trajectory—under the leadership of Amare Aregawi—offers a rare case study in institutional resilience. Founded in 1995, in the immediate aftermath of Ethiopia’s constitutional recognition of freedom of expression, The Reporter set out to practice professional, non-partisan journalism in a deeply polarized public sphere. This commitment to the middle ground proved costly. Suspicious audiences questioned its independence, while a state still adjusting to constitutional governance maintained close oversight of its work.
The most punishing obstacles, however, were administrative. Efforts to vertically integrate into printing were stalled by land-use disputes and regulatory reversals, leaving imported machinery idle for more than fifteen years. This forced long-term dependence on external printers and illustrates a broader truth about private media in developing economies: capital investment alone is insufficient without predictable institutions.
The risks were not merely financial. Editorial leadership repeatedly found itself before the courts, defending investigative reporting through dozens of legal cases. Detentions, surveillance, and security threats became part of the cost of claiming a watchdog role in a fragile democratic setting. That the institution endured is less a story of individual heroism than of deliberate system-building—of replacing personality-driven journalism with organizational routines capable of outlasting their founders.
Seen this way, MCC’s thirty-year journey mirrors Ethiopia’s wider media evolution: a slow, uneven shift from state-dominated information control toward a more plural, if still contested, public sphere. Survival itself becomes an achievement, and continuity a form of quiet resistance.
Having served as editor-in-chief of The Reporter’s English edition and, briefly, as deputy editor of this magazine, I view this anniversary not as a moment for nostalgia but for reflection. It is a point of learning for journalists—and a challenge to investors who have long dismissed legacy media as commercially irrational.
The deeper question is not whether journalism can be profitable, but whether societies can afford to treat it solely as a profit-making venture. Independent media behaves less like a conventional business than like infrastructure: essential, loss-absorbing, and foundational to markets and governance alike. Supporting legacy media, therefore, is neither charity nor nostalgia. It is an investment in institutional memory, civic trust, and the informational systems without which modern economies—and democracies—ultimately fail.
The real risk, then, is not investing in media. It is the silence that follows when no one does.
Samson Berhane is an economics graduate with expertise in business and economic reporting and communications. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not represent the opinions of the institutions he is affiliated with nor that of the magazine.
