As I mentioned in part
one of this post (here), if more people were online in Nigeria, more papers
might be in financial troubles. It’s funny that papers- as most of them do –who
advocate for a better Nigeria where the average citizen is well educated and
perhaps more tech-savvy are perhaps calling for their own decline, because once
that happens and the local cabbie, bricklayer, etc realizes he can check the
news on his phone (because remember in this scenario everyone has a smart phone
of some kind), newspaper sales will decline further.
I’m not saying the
newspaper will no longer exist, but it will need to adapt. It survived the
coming of radio and TV after all, because not everyone is into those mediums.
The same can be said about the “threat” of the cellphone and its connection to
the world, not everyone is into it. Matter of fact, I would say it’s better for
the lesser known newspapers in the country to not have a larger population
online if they still want to thrive. The big newspaper companies in Nigeria
today enjoyed the financial gains of the pre-social media age. Any news paper
that came after is most likely struggling.
Today’s new newspaper
companies are online (Citizens Platform,
Naij.com, Premium Times, etc). I was opportune to work at
one (where the time wasn’t premium and there was no platform for a citizen like
I)… for three weeks. It was here I faced the second obstacle: content and
creativity. You can never run out of content, particularly online. You don’t
need to wait for the story to come to you, you can search the story and
re-write it. This is basically aggregating, something I was primarily hired to
do… among other things as I was to find out every single day, because someone
couldn’t lay out the rules from day one.
The problem with
aggregating is you’re likely rewriting something that is already out there, but
for your own paper. You’re also likely going to be writing up stuff sent to you
from your co-workers. There’s really nothing wrong with aggregating, as long as
your website has original content no one will be worried about seeing a story
on your site that was previously elsewhere unless you do like the stereotypical
Nigerian blogger and copy and paste.
When it came to original
content however, I found very little room for it, where I had to fight for
stories that I thought were relevant and that other Nigerian websites were not
carrying (again, certain rules were not made clear to me from the beginning).
This was the creativity problem. It seemed it was being killed in this company
for the more traditional stories (politics and sports: their bread and butter).
Never mind the encouraged tabloid-ish headlines (See What This Guy Was Caught Doing) they liked to parade to the
fact that one of my articles got edited by three or four people, by the end of which
looked like it was written by a hack who stole my name (no disrespect to my
editors, but too many cooks…).
I understand the need
for editors and I understand the need for rules (especially when they choose
your headlines for you as you silently cringe and die inside), but if we’re not
growing what’s the point?! The title of this post is in no way a riff of those
catchy headlines, though I admit it is me being a tad dramatic, but I find it
better than: See What This Bitter Ex-Writer
Has To Say About Nigerian Newspapers, which might make you click on the
link to see if I hurled insults on the newspaper business only to find out I
was being quite objective (I think I’ve been objective thus far). But why be so
over-dramatic with the headlines? Good writing should sell itself… okay, maybe
with a good headline too, but not one that looks like we’re writing for Hello! magazine!
Still on physical
newspapers, there are ways for them to still prosper. They need to think
outside the box, move online and perhaps do features on the idiot box (a.k.a
television), that great invention that occupies so many people’s time. I’d give
more ideas here, but bruh someone needs to pay me. At this point I’ve failed to
mention one crucial thing, before working in both these media houses, I worked
and by default still work at a printing press that specifically prints
newspapers. So I know what the volume of print is… it’s low. I’ve seen it gone
from a constant daily output of big newspapers to days where it seemed nothing
was happening. The big newspaper companies (the ones that thrived off
advertising pre-social media) all own their printing press these days and don’t
need us. The new ones (caught by the changing tide of technology) collectively
don’t print enough to cover the cost one big newspaper company use to make for
us back in the day, remember a lot of these new papers rely on advertising for financial
sustenance.
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