By Lekan Otufodunrin, The Nation
The first ever Impact Journalism Day- a unique project involving 20 leading newspapers across the world publishing dedicated sections packed with creative solutions to global issues on the same day- was marked on Saturday, June 22, 2013.
The project, initiated by Sparknews in collaboration with media partners, seeks to kick start change in the way we think of news and newspapers. It promotes reporting of the best, smartest initiatives, with the hope of inspiring others to replicate, innovate and communicate the ideas to others.
The Nation is proud to be one of the media partners for the project, which I consider very thoughtful considering the need for the media to more than ever before seek to make more impact in the lives of their audience.
With the global economic crisis, many are in search of solutions to the various challenges they have to cope with. Living has become tougher in not only underdeveloped nations but also in developing and developed nations. Unemployment is on the rise, poverty is growing, more diseases are emerging, environmental degradation is worsening and terrorism is spreading worldwide among others problems.
In the midst of the bleak situation, readers as Christian de Boisredon, founder of Sparknews rightly puts it, are hungry for stories with a difference. He says they want “stories that bring hope and concrete solutions, at both local and global level. They are looking for signs of change they can identify with. Change that will make them think…and act”.
The media undoubtedly has immense capacity to influence their audience and have been doing so through fulfilling its educating, informing and entertaining functions. It’s difficult to imagine life without the mass media, which beyond the traditional print and electronic medium now include the online platforms.
We really live in troubled times in which the media should be interested in helping to provide solutions. We have to move from just telling stories and highlighting problems to providing concrete solutions. Journalism for journalism sake cannot serve the present generation of readers who have found themselves in desperate situations requiring urgent ideas about how to survive.
With the media not been immune from the economic crisis, the temptation for the media will be to be more ‘business like’ and focus on issues that could sell their papers and not salient issues their readers want to read about. While media owners should be concerned about their survival they must now fail in their social responsibility to the readers.
Journalism must impact on the lives of the people or else it will become irrelevant. Journalists must make a conscious effort to identify the challenges in their community and contribute to solving them.
Journalists should be concerned about the positive impact of their work through feedbacks from their audience.
Readers need hope to believe that tomorrow will come. They need to be inspired to know that they can overcome whatever challenges they are going through presently. They need to be encouraged to maximize their potentials.
With the world now being truly a global village, thanks to the Internet, there is the opportunity to seek and share solutions to global issues. The Impact Journalism Day should serve as a reminder for journalists to make the world a better place through their publications.