Today, every unemployed or unemployable journalist wants to carry a ‘dignified’ title of being a publisher, hence the rash of poorly edited and managed online publications in the cyberspace. It has become a case of ‘read one and you’ve read all’; no variety, no nuance, and no depth. News stories now read the same and flat! Features have become tasteless and investigation poor, if any.
All the metrics for legacy news media are headed in the same direction: less revenue, far fewer reporters and editors, less profit to reinvest and less community clout. – Rory O’Connor
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It is not in doubt that journalism around the world is undergoing tremendous changes and threat: technology, dictatorship, problems of funding and self-inflicted wounds (knowingly or unknowingly) inflicted by journalists on the profession in recent times, are some of the threats confronting the profession.
Some of these problems are not new. They are age old and only present themselves in new formats. For instance, in the 1980s when Ray Ekpu was removed as editor of the high-flying Sunday Times, the paper whose sales figures he had moved up significantly, and was sent to the Business Times as editor. He was determined to recreate the magic that he performed at Sunday Times there. However, when the atmosphere became too toxic and he saw that he was not given the free hand needed to change the staid and dull nature of business reporting as editor, he had to move to the Concord Group at the invitation of his friend (the late) Dele Giwa. He was made chair of the Editorial Board there.
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Concord became stronger and profited from the loss of the Daily Times Group. Later when his friend (Giwa) began to have issues with the publisher, the trio of Giwa, Ekpu and Yakubu Mohammed left the Concord Group and teamed up with Dan Agbese to found Newswatch. The magazine changed the face and phase of magazine journalism in Nigeria. The quartet didn’t quit to establish their own newspapers or magazines individually, they teamed up.
The same happened years later when Nosa Igiebor, Onome Osifo Whiskey, Dele Omotunde, Dare Babarinsa, and a few others left Newswatch to found TELL magazine. Good journalism is like playing in an orchestra, all hands must work together to produce good music. Working in silos does not work for smooth news production, either electronic or print.
Many Media, Less News
But what do we have today? Any journalist (reporter, editor, sometimes even advert executives) who loses his/her job or in newsroom politics rushes to his/her keyboard and begins to ‘publish online.’ What results from this? Poorly edited and reported ‘news stories,’ some of which are copied from the website of the few remaining legacy media that are still doing the real job. In communication, we talk about plurality of voices. However, what we have today are many news sources with the same news or no news at all! They all publish news from same sources with little or no difference.
A one man ‘Online’ news medium based in Lagos gives you what he calls “Breaking News” about terrorist attacks in Borno State while sitting prettily behind his keyboard in his home in far-flung Lambe or Ota in Ogun State! Meanwhile he has no single reporter out there at the epicentre of the crisis. All what he does is to surf from one (legacy media) website to the other trying to cobble together the few details he can gather to fill the space. Today, news websites are run with no on the ground reporting as was the case in the past. They only copy from the legacy media which also have no more in house reporters but make do with stringers or freelancers who are paid according to number of stories published!
Column writing that was the forte of the likes of Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, Mohammed Haruna, Onome Osifo-Whiskey, Yakubu Mohammed, Olatunji Dare, Sonala Olumhense, Dare Babarinsa, etc., are today dominated by those who should still be learning how to write long features on the hitherto ebullient Features Desk of yore. Everyone who can sit in front of a keyboard wants to be given some space and be addressed as a columnist!!!
Nigerian journalists now work in silos – a good reporter wants to be an editor, even if he’s not a good one. Editing is a craft and a talent that you hone over a long period; so is reporting. You can be a great editor but a disaster as a reporter. In the 1980s and 1990s Giwa, Ekpu, Agbese, Mohammed did not set out to establish their medium as individuals, they combined to give Nigeria and the world a solid news magazine. The same happened when Igiebor and others joined forces to found TELL.
Today, every unemployed or unemployable journalist wants to carry a ‘dignified’ title of being a publisher, hence the rash of poorly edited and managed online publications in the cyberspace. It has become a case of ‘read one and you’ve read all’; no variety, no nuance, and no depth. News stories now read the same and flat! Features have become tasteless and investigation poor, if any.
The Legacy Media Too
The legacy media are not faring any better, as some of their managers seem to be afraid of experience, thus old reliable hands are shown the way out and green horns, who should be learning the ropes, are recruited with the salary of an experienced reporter/editor shared into two or three, in order to employ those wet behind their ears, who before long are promoted to editorial seats without the requisite cognate experience. The more the merrier, with merit sacrificed at the altar of cutting corners.
Column writing that was the forte of the likes of Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese, Mohammed Haruna, Onome Osifo-Whiskey, Yakubu Mohammed, Olatunji Dare, Sonala Olumhense, Dare Babarinsa, etc., are today dominated by those who should still be learning how to write long features on the hitherto ebullient Features Desk of yore. Everyone who can sit in front of a keyboard wants to be given some space and be addressed as a columnist!!!
Newspapers – both online and physical – have become dead; no one wants to read them again, because they are filled with shallow pro-government stories about Governor A and B ‘commissioning’ fathom projects and inspecting or flagging off road construction and fly over bridges, even where there are no rivers or traffic to necessitate such.
Court cases are poorly reported because there are no more experienced court reporters and judicial editors in the news rooms. Gone are the days when The Guardian, Vanguard, Concord, The PUNCH and the others reported the courts robustly and shorn the judgements of all legalese. Today, a court gives a verdict on a case. Wait for the report in the media, and if 10 websites report the verdict, be sure of getting either 10 different (often poor) interpretations or worse still, the same wrong interpretations!! Why?
Investigative stories are hard to come by today because no one is interested in doing them or media managers are not ready to fund or allow reporters engage in such again.
Why can’t TV, radio producers, presenters and others come together to found a powerful YouTube or podcast channel that would be professionally produced and organised, rather than every John and Olumide trying to work in silos and thus producing substandard materials that cannot stand the test of time? Where are the journalists of today who would give us in the cyberspace the equivalent of Newswatch, TELL and other legacy magazines and newspapers?
Ego Massaging as Interviews
Besides, journalists no longer ask troubling questions. We allow politicians to purchase airtime and assemble those who would never ask ‘annoying’ questions, because we want to massage egos and not to interview! The interviewee now calls the shot. A case of the tail wagging the dog.
We all believe the Internet has killed or is killing newspaper readership. I think this is half-true. I have travelled around the world and I still see people buying and holding copies of newspapers, even in climes where there are free WiFi to log unto and read freely. There are still some people who are addicted to holding and reading physical newspapers! The truth is that readers are not getting value for their money and they are therefore running away from paying for public relations couched as news.
The new rave now are YouTube and podcasts. Both have become popular. Our colleagues with or without experience are drifting toward it and are populating the cyberspace with half-baked YouTube and podcast materials. What stops us from learning from the example of Ray Ekpu and the others? Why can’t reporters, sub-editors, features writers and investigative journalists with cognate experience pool resources together and establish a strong online medium, rather than populate the cyberspace with badly sourced news stories on the altar of being called “Online Publishers”?
Why can’t TV, radio producers, presenters and others come together to found a powerful YouTube or podcast channel that would be professionally produced and organised, rather than every John and Olumide trying to work in silos and thus producing substandard materials that cannot stand the test of time? Where are the journalists of today who would give us in the cyberspace the equivalent of Newswatch, TELL and other legacy magazines and newspapers?
For instance, at the completion of this year’s hajj process, seven pilgrims were arrested on their return from the religious rites. It was hot news for all media outlets. What has happened since then? There is also the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) scandal. What our numerous news sites have been feeding us with are official statements and no independent investigations!
We need more credible medium online to follow in the footsteps of Premium Times, The Cable, International Centre for Investigative Reports (ICIR), and SaharaReporters, sans the politics of the publisher.
Olayinka Oyegbile is a journalist, writer and media scholar.
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