Lekan Otufodunrin once shared the post below with colleagues on a Whatsapp group for Online Editors. The post is reproduced below for the benefit of other online editors and prospective ones on opportunities they need to know of.
Dear colleagues,
Forgive me if my advice in this post is elementary and you don’t need to be told about it. I keep having the urge to write about this issue but the more I think I should not, the more I feel it may be meant for at least one of us.
So what is this self-acclaimed Media Career Development Specialist up to this time again when he should be more concerned about ensuring the website he is supposed to be managing has all the breaking news and content it needs.
Pardon me, my sermon or message or whatever you call it is about how your contact details, official email and info@yourwebsite on your website can work for you.
Before, I became Editor, Online or Online Editor (which one self ), the contact details of our webmaster was more prominent in the About Us section of our website. I didn’t pay attention to this arrangement until one of my junior colleagues in the department who felt I was not asserting and taking my rightful position on the website rearranged the listing.
You are the Editor of the website and no one should appear to be more important than you. You need your phone numbers and official email address (otufodunrin@thenationonlineng.net) not @yahoo or gmail for all to see. Some important emails will never be sent to your unofficial email.
So what has not just ‘showing myself ‘like the youths of today like to say, but paying attention and engaging with the messages that come through to you done for me?
Be warned, there will be too many unsolicited emails with everybody wanting to get your attention for many not fit to publish materials or outright junk mails but the secret is to develop a way of looking through to sift the shaft from the wheat.
I remember getting a call someday and one lady wanted to know if I had seen a mail addressed to the Editor inviting him for a seminar with defence chiefs in Abuja.
“Are you the Editor of The Nation?” she asked trying to be sure she was speaking to the right person the letter was meant for.
“I am the Editor, Online, your letter was for the Editor, Daily and the letter will be passed on to him,” I replied with a measure of confidence that must have got the caller thinking he was speaking to someone who is as equally important as the Editor, Daily.
“Pardon me,” she said and proceeded to ask what my job entails. By the time I was through with my ‘you know what’ 24 hour work schedule of all editorial work combined, she ‘pleaded’ maybe, maybe not that I should ‘please’ be one of the invited editors and so it was that I was the only Online Editor that attended the all-expenses-paid Abuja seminar for Managing Directors, Editors-in-Chief and Editor, Daily.
We are as important as who we say we are and do.
I SHOULD HAVE WARNED YOU THIS A LONG POST, I DIDN’T REALISE SO TOO WHEN I STARTED WRITING
Four years ago, I almost missed a mail about a new concept called Impact Journalism Day (IJD) which someone wanted to find out if The Nation will want to participate in. Out of curiosity and not wanting to dismiss ‘brain wave’ ideas some restless persons have, I accepted the proposal and took the trouble of exchanging numerous emails and instructions of what we have published on the day in online and in print. Convincing my Managing Director was not easy but I did.
Unknown to me the other leg of the programme was attending a week-long seminar in Paris with top media executive from major publications worldwide. There was a generous 50% support for the cost of the flight ticket, free accommodation and I need not add feeding!
Since that year, The Nation has been the only Nigerian newspaper participating in the global celebration and other similar unique editorial initiatives by Sparknews, initiators of the IJD.
I’m not the only one that has benefitted from foreign trip opportunities. I nominated one of my former junior colleagues for a United Nations trip to somewhere I can’t remember now. The colleague also travelled to somewhere in East Europe based on taking my advice to usually write and publish some of the press statements from a UN office on our website even if the print doesn’t do so.
Lastly, before I begin to bore you as if I have not done already, I paid for my official car with the commission from one of the advert requests buried in the junk emails in my box.
I got the mail asking for the cost of the advert from the UK and I obliged. After the first advert was published, I took the trouble to send the e-edition page of the advert to the advertiser though he did not request for it.
He liked it and he asked for another and another, making three. I got 25 per cent discount for the three pages and paid the bill for my four-year-old official car offered at five per cent of the original cost.
Did I make any sense? I hope I did. If I didn’t, delete all you have read and be wary of reading any of my future messages.
