Lekan Otufodunrin, journalist and media career development specialist, paints a gloomy picture of the state of the media in Nigeria and suggests options open to traditional journalists to remain relevant in the industry.
Have you ever been on board a plane and the pilot announced that passengers should prepare for crash-landing due to some circumstances beyond his control?
I have not and I pray I won’t be.
What I have experienced is the situation where after some few minutes of unstable flight, the seat belt light comes on and passengers are told the plane is experiencing some turbulence which may last for sometime.
Last Saturday, on my way to give a talk at the monthly meeting of the Lagos Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists ( NUJ), the crisis facing media organizations in the country struck me like the case of a very turbulent flight and the passengers are told to prepare for crash-landing.
Without hesitation,I declared to members at the meeting that based on what I know as a management staff of a top national newspaper in the country, our media industry, to use an American expression, is in a ‘deep shit’
The media like every other sector in the country is not spared from the economic crisis ravaging the nation. Copy sales are dropping at alarming rate, no thanks to the poor purchasing power of the readers and the Internet where access to newspaper content is virtually unlimited.
Due to lack of enough foreign exchange to import and funds to buy from local suppliers at exorbitant price, newspapers don’t have enough newsprint for the limited copies they want to circulate.
What about adverts? the major source of income for the media, bookings have drastically reduced that even major newspapers have cut their pagination to 48, except when they have enough adverts to justify an increase.
For some of the published adverts from agencies, governments and individuals, debts are mounting, leaving media organizations with poor cash flow situation.
With the precarious situation the media has found itself, my warning to NUJ members was unambiguous: be prepared for shut downs and retrenchments.
” The retrenchments will come sooner or later and there is nothing even the union can do about it,” I said, adding that media organizations have to take painful business decisions if they are to continue to publish.
” Please don’t be caught unawares. Even if you are not asked to go now, you should begin to think of an exit plan just in case it gets to your turn. If you have other skills apart from journalism start developing them now. After all, you have to survive when you retire from active journalism.”
While the managements of some of the media houses owing their staff for months can be accused of bad management of their resources, the truth is that they are not making enough to justify their present staff strength.
Ironically, while a number of media houses will fold up, new ones will emerge, but not in the format we are used to. Some will the wholly digital, while the operations of others will be a based on the emerging convergence model of the combination of traditional and digital operations.
In addition to the traditional media skills, knowledge of new media skills will the required for journalists who want to remain relevant in emerging media configuration.
” My advice to you all is to acquire the required skills and not wait to be sacked on the basis of not fitting in to new job schedules. The skills many of us have as traditional journalists cannot sustain you in the new dispensation.
” We all need training and retraining to become multi-media in our practice. No one is too old to learn. If I can become a tech savvy journalist after about twenty years of being a traditional journalist, anyone can, ” I stated.
My position on this matter is restated in an interview by Chairman of Channels Television, John Momoh published in Volume one of Voices Beyond the Newsroom edited by Richard Ikiebie, Senior Fellow and Director, the Centre for Leadership in a Journalism, School of Media and Communication, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos.
” Because of the digital age and its impact, the print media, television and radio won’t die, but would have to adjust. There will be opportunities for people to be able to reinvent themselves; it will be the survival of the fittest,” Momoh said.
