Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State has canvassed the convocation of a general conference by Nigerian media practitioners to deliberate on emerging developments posing threat to the practice of the profession.
This, Ajimobi said, had become imperative in view of the various challenges being faced by the profession which, if not addressed with utmost urgency, could adversely affect it and rubbish the integrity of the practitioners.
Ajimobi made this call while speaking at the launch of a book: “A Servant to His Colleagues,” written by a veteran journalist, Tunde Akingbade, at the NUJ Press Centre, Ibadan on Tuesday.
Speaking through the state Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Mr. Bosun Oladele, the governor drew the attention of media practitioners to the emerging trend in the profession, which was online media.
“A few months ago, the whole world woke up to the news of the great and influential 79-year old Newsweek announcing the shut-down of its hard copy edition and stating that it would soon begin to publish online,’’ he said.
Ajimobi also expressed concern over “great threat” that the current economic downturn had posed to the hard-copy publication of newspapers all over the world, and particularly in Nigeria.
He said: “In Nigeria, the first and most daunting attack to the sustenance of hard copy newspaper publication is the shrinking purchasing power of the Naira and the terse purses of Nigerians.
“In those days, newspapers were available in every home, especially in the highly educated Southern part of the country. Today, because of the poverty in the land, purchasing newspapers is a big task. This has ensured that the print run of many Nigerian newspapers has dwindled considerably and ultimately affecting the fortune of newspaper houses.
“Indeed, there is this allegation that the print-runs of all newspapers in Nigeria today cannot be compared to the 500,000 and 200,000 copies of the Sunday Times and the Sunday Tribune of the early eighties.”
The governor also identified the availability of same news materials on the internet as another reason that constituted a great threat to newspaper publication in Nigeria.
He noted: Many newspaper readers do not have to purchase hard copies of newspapers but resort to reading the content of the news online.
“This has affected the fortune of newspapers greatly.
“Many great newspapers like Next have had to close shop due to the capital intensive nature of newspaper publication and the dwindling returns from advertisements and circulation.”
Although Ajimobi said that online publications required less capital and 24-hour availability of news to the readers, the governor, however, identified the infiltration of non-professionals and all manner of people into journalism practice as one of the greatest challenges posed by the new trend in the profession.
This, he said, had swelled the ranks of falsehood peddlers and those who assassinate characters of the elite without corresponding verification of their reports.
“And because their news is made available to a multiplicity of readers, it enjoys wide audience and rave review, which has the potential to destroy faster than a bushfire in the harmattan,” he said.
According to Ajimobi, all these have made the general conference necessary as it would create a veritable avenue for media practitioners to discuss the future of the journalism profession and how to tackle the various challenges.
While saluting “the great men and women who have made the profession of journalism a distinguished vocation,” the governor put on record the efforts of journalists in building an equitable and egalitarian society, adding that when the history of the greatness of the country shall be written, their efforts would occupy sizeable chapters.
Ajimobi said: “But for journalism and the monumental strides of its practitioners, especially during military rule, the democracy that we all have today would not have been a reality.
“Coupled with the role of keeping government on its toes, making it accountable to the governed, which the Fourth Estate of the Realm has been performing creditably well in the last 13 years, no patriot worth his onions would not doff his hat for Nigerian journalists.”
Ajimobi described the author of the book as one veteran journalist that the journalism profession must continue to venerate because of his link to those great days of unpolluted journalism practice and the integrity that he had come to represent over the years.
He said: “The documentation of Mr. Akingbade’s journalism experience over the decades, which is captured in this book, is a commendable path, which journalists must be encouraged to tread.
“Those who refer to journalism as history in a hurry indeed understand the mobile nature of the historical content of newspapers. Day in, day out, we read in the papers great documentation of our today which eventually become perishable due to the passing phases of stories in them. But these stories are passing historical documents which needed to be collated for our children and children’s children to read about our strides.
“Newspapers can also not offer us that ability to document this passing history because of their perishability. This is why converting some of those historical events into books is a great service to humanity. Such efforts should be encouraged so that posterity will be availed the opportunity of having access to some of our great efforts.”