Dipo Kehinde made his name in investigative journalism with The Sun Newspapers before floating his own magazine, Chief Detective. In this interview with Akin Adewakun, the multiple-award winner explains what informed his interest in investigative journalism and why that genre is dying today. Excerpts:
You wear a lot of professional caps: a fashion designer, an artist and a journalist. How do you marry these skills to ensure that one does not interfere with the other?
The bottomline is that all of them fall under creative works. Art is at the heart of everything: be you a writer, a designer or even an artist. In fact, the greatest writers, designers that we have in history were artists. Look at Da Vinci. Look at his invention, despite the fact that he was a scientist. Look at Picasso. He had a magazine then called La Corona. As an artist, you are expected to be divergently creative. I think it’s just that spirit, the artist in me that is always coming out to try and do new things. And I apply it in everything I do, even when I write. There was a time one very gifted sub-editor, who was seeing my copy for the very first time, looked at me and said I must be an artist. I was shocked because I didn’t know how he knew. He was just seeing me for the first time and he was able to know this. So there is a way these things reflect in everything you do. So managing them to ensure that they don’t interfere with one another is really no challenge.
Investigative journalism, a genre in which you thrive most as a journalist, is dying. Why is this so?
I will not agree with that claim that that genre of journalism is dying. I think we are just having new experiences. In life, there are various stages you must pass through in terms of experience. You keep learning new things. And talking about investigative reporting, I think it is because of the economic downturn in the country. You know investigative reporting at times could be very expensive. It needs serious financing. You can investigate a particular case for several months, visiting places, tipping sources and all that. It’s quite expensive. Besides, it’s a dangerous field. We all see what is happening to some of those journalists toeing that path. Examples even abound in Africa and by extension all over the world. Today, daring journalists are being killed when they go into dangerous territories. Even in Nigeria, there are instances, especially during the late General Sani Abacha era. For instance, we all still remember Bagauda Kaltho and some others. So a lot of people today see this as a pathway to death, which they believe, if followed, one may not come back. Therefore, they won’t want to toe that path, especially when there are other ‘juicier’ and less risky beats. This is a beat where all you get is honour and you know there is a paradigm shift in our values today. I think that is why we don’t realty have too many people on the beat. And that is why in some cases, posting a reporter to the crime beat looks like punishment because there is nothing in terms of financial benefit. Besides, it’s such a tough beat. If you are a business reporter, the structure is always there. A release is usually prepared to guide you as a reporter and if you are up and doing, you can’t really miss a story. But in crime beat, armed robbers will not put up a press release that they are operating somewhere tomorrow or whatever. So you must have your ears to the ground and you must have very good friends on the beat, especially among the police.
Fewer people are going into journalism from higher institutions. Does that not give you goose pimples as a publisher?
It’s not only in journalism. It’s a societal problem, which I think has to do with upbringing. In the good old days, you would see the way our parents grew. They were ready to start from zero, from the scratch, from a Volkswagen car to a Peugeot 504 and later Mercedes Benz. But nowadays, a young man wants to leave school and start with Lamborghini or the biggest car. So when you have a situation like this, where everybody and everything is about money, so many things would start to die. And that is also affecting journalism. A lot of brilliant people who would have made a difference are not keen in going into the practice. Unfortunately, it’s not in journalism alone. A lot of people would not want to join the police because of their reservations for the job. But the fact remains that somebody must do these jobs. A lot of people stay away from journalism because they believe there is no money there. But it’s a job you have to serve humanity by making the leadership accountable to the led and laying governance bare before the people. It is not a job you go into because you want to be stupendously rich.
You publish a magazine, Chief Detective, with a focus on crime. Why go into publishing, especially that genre where the general impression is that it is not economically buoyant?
Money doesn’t guarantee happiness. You can be the richest man in the world and may still not be happy. And you can be a poor man and yet you are happy. You will never see me pursue money. It comes to me naturally. Anything that comes to me, I take it as mine. If it doesn’t come, I know it’s not mine. For instance, most of my creatives will still be adored in years to come. People will see them and remember the greatness of the artist. If you go on Google, you will see my name on BBC website. They are celebrating a particular story that I wrote on their website now. When they came for a training in Nigeria, I won an award. Generation yet unborn when they search for the name Dipo Kehinde, they will be proud. It’s not about money. My idea of contentment is having what will make you comfortable. That you want to pay school fees, feed your family or pay house rent and you don’t go begging, then you are rich. That is, having enough to feed your need and not enough to feed your greed. It is greed that gets people to engage in unwholesome acts and that’s the problem we have in the country. I have enough to feed my need, but not enough to feed my greed.
As a publisher and employer, how do we tackle the issue of ‘unskilled’ labour in journalism?
It is still about the person. In life, you must have some pursuit, which you want to put your life into. If you are a journalist, you need to put your heart in the job and be passionate. It is when you have all these that other things will fall in place. But some people don’t see it that way, they just see it as a means to an end. Maybe something they need to do to earn their pay, to feed family and meet other ends. But for me, it goes beyond that. It’s a passion, something that has defined my own life. I don’t know what else I would have been outside journalism. So I believe the first step is ensuring that people going into that profession are actually passionate about it.
. Nigerian Tribune.