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| Title: | Understanding the Yewspaper Usiness in Nigeria: Resource Book |
| Authors: | Jowitt, David
Danaan, Godfrey N.
Obateru, Taye C. |
| Issue Date: | 2016 |
| Publisher: | Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
| Series/Report no.: | ;Pp 1-135 |
| Description: | FOREWORD:
PRINT JOURNALISM
FOR THE GLOBAL VILLAGE;
It seems terribly idiosyncratic 10 be considering journalism and print media at the moment. When the British broadsheet newspaper The Independent on Sunday published its final issue after a full quarter century on the newsstands, on 20 March 2016, responses included, arrestingly, praise for what was perceived to be a far-sighted strategic response to the wider crisis of print journalism: to stop the press. The Independent on Sunday was to be no more on paper but would live on via a website. The ''brand" of the paper, and what it stood for, remained. And for readers who customarily access news media via a variety of digital devices, the ending or the print newspaper may have been imperceptible anyway. In this respect, The Independent on Sunday was seen as leading the way and that invariably all newspapers will, at some point in the future, commentators noted, follow this lead.
Perhaps then the criSIS in print journalism is not so much one of dwindling interest and shrinking readerships but, rather, the very reverse of this trend. We read news widely and promiscuously, perhaps even constantly, and accessing our news from around the world. Our "global village" then is one that is now served (for the Anglophone world) by news outlets across Northern and Southern hemispheres. The challenges, for newspapers in print, seem to bc along the lines of production cost (with the perception among the younger readership that news ought to be free), of timeliness (to read a newspaper often means being reminded of the news you first heard about during the afternoon of the day before), and of accommodating, or re-accommodating informed opinion. This latter aspect has bccn in direct conflict with the matter of cost: as overheads have been slashed to maintain or lower the shelf price, the balance has tilted in favour of facts and figures, over thought and analysis. But facts and figures are often freely available, and no one outlet has a monopoly (ors at least, a monopoly that can last more than a couple of hours) over facts and figures. Thought and analysis, as associated with incisive and expert writers, often not beholden to his or her proprietor's editorial line, remains something of a unique offer. In Western Europe, it has not been unusual for that difficult figure of the "intellectualk to turn up regularly in newspapers, rcacting to or offering commentary on the events of the day. Indeed, those with a longer view may consider it something of a duty of social or civic care to maintain a space for otherwise challenging writing: to ensurc a level of critical inquiry remains alive, in the manner of cultivating and educating a readership, along with offering a source of modest income for those writers who provide as much in terms of opinion, In this way, the newspaper becomes characterised by a richness of character. At 'the other end of the spectrum for what is, in the UK. often referred to pejoratively as the "gutter press" — the careful tracking of stories and dangling of insights around celebrities achieves something of a comparable character. One knows that a certain tabloid will be the destination for scoops on certain media stars, and so this becomes a unique offeri
One conclusion that can be drawn at this juncture is that the profession of a newspaper writer is again coming to the fore. The authors in this book are therefore quite correct to address aspects of the process of writing for newspapers, of expectations of reportage, of the sway and meaning and power of reportage. and to have this considered in a context that is particular to the challenges and opportunities of the Nigerian political and cultural situation. For the Western reader. Nigerian journalism offers a chance to break free from the stranglehold of received opinion in their own mainstream "home" media. For the Nigerian reader, the lessons of the successes and failures of Western newspapers can and should be absorbed into the daily news discourse. The crisis in print journalism, from this perspective, is entirely generative,
Dr Benjamin Halligan
Director of the Doctoral College
University of Wolverhampton
United Kingdom
April 2016 |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/3532 |
| ISBN: | (10): 1-4438-9773-6 |
| ISSN: | (13): 978-1-4438-9773-0 |
| Appears in Collections: | Mass Communication
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