Lekan Otufodunrin recalls the angry reaction of Late Ogun State correspondent of The Guardian Newspaper, Tayo Awotunsin to his report not being sent by his Telex operator in the pre-Internet journalism days.
Long before the use of electronic mail and other new media devices for sending messages, newspaper state correspondents used to send stories to their headquarters by dictating every word on telephones. Yes, every word!
There was also the radiophones for dictating the stories with the use of codes like A for Alfa, B for Bravo, C for Charlie for every letter when the words are not clear enough for the ‘story taker’ or reporters in the newsrooms.
May his soul continue to rest in peace, Late Mr Tayo Awotunsin, then of the Guardian Newspaper, was however one of the few State Correspondents in Abeokuta, Ogun State in the late ’80s that had a Fax machine for sending his handwritten reports.
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The Fax machine operator employed for him used to work in the government-owned Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and did not understand the need for the urgency of sending reports.
So it happened on one of the early weeks of the operator’s resumption of work that Mr Awotunsin left a very important story for her to send and went for another assignment.
She tried her best to send the story and when she didn’t get through at 6 pm which is past her normal closing time in her former workplace, she left for home.
Surprised not to see the important story in The Guardian the next day, Awotunsin asked the operator if she didn’t send the report.
To his surprise, the operator said she couldn’t get through and had to leave for home when it was past closing time.
“Closing time, Closing time,” the livid bespectacled Awotunsin asked, standing up from his desk. “When the story was yet to be sent?” he added looking in my direction as if to say “can you imagine what this woman did.”
Not still appreciating the gravity of what she did wrong, the operator responded to the lamentation by Mr Awotunsin on the implications of not sending the story that she would send it that day.
” Oga, I am sorry, but let’s take it easy. Slow and steady wins the race,” she said with Mr Awotunsin starring at her incredibly.
I tried hard not to laugh at the scene playing before me concerning the naivety of the operator.
“Lekan, gbo nkan ti woman yi nso” (Lekan hear what this woman is saying). I didn’t envisage what happened next.
Mr Awotunsin shouted “No, slow and steady loses the race in journalism” banging the table. I perfectly understood Mr Awotunsin’s anger. I and other reporters had the story published in our papers that morning and he felt really bad his ‘civil servant’ mentality staff failed him.
His editors who don’t know what happened will assume he missed the important story and here was the operator with her “slow and steady” excuse which expectedly, Mr Awotunsin , a man of few words, tried hard not to give respond as harshly as he would have loved to.
For those who may be wondering why the operator did not call to inform the boss of her inability to get through or the boss call to confirm if the story was sent, the available phone then was not mobile!
Mr Awotunsin who later joined Champion Newspapers and was one of the two Nigerian journalists who died covering the Liberian civil war, had to get to the office the next day to know his story was not sent.
The operator might be right about being steady, but not not slow to win the news delivery race in journalism.
Whatever it will take, the story must be delivered as fast as possible. When I can’t get through to Lagos on phone or radio, I sometimes have to stop the Lagos bound buses to deliver the story physically!
