Friday, March 29, 2024

Nigerian media: Balancing professionalism, advocacy and business

What, really, is the business of the media? I suspect that if this question were opened to the floor there would be as many answers as there are editors. You might also be surprised that even editors working in the same media organisation would have significantly different answers.
There’s nothing wrong with that. There will be those who would say, “The business of the media is to sell space.” Another editor might say, “We’re in the business of publishing news.” While another might respond, “What do you mean? We’re in the business of creating communities.” And yet another editor might say, “You know what, our job is to mirror society.”
There’s no wrong answer. The editor who says the business of the media is to sell space is saying what happens in a number of media organisations these days where editorial and advert sales functions have dramatically and frighteningly fused.
The editor who says he’s in the business of news publishing will lock horns with the advert manager if there was ever a threat of encroachment into the slot for news, while the editor who is concerned about creating communities will be interested in the social media extensions of mainstream content.
As for the mirror editor, he’s probably your straight news guy, with no care in the world about meaning, context and the like – until sales begin to drop.

In whichever camp we find ourselves, we often play the egg and chicken game, asking ourselves, why not good business first and, then, good journalism second? What’s the use of good journalism and bad business anyway?

But as I said, it does not make any answer right or wrong. It however does something more fundamental: it’s a vital insight on how the resources of the media organisation would be allocated. How we perceive what we’re doing and the importance we attach to it determine the level of resources and energy we allocate to it and, therefore, the result that we get.
A media organisation with senior editors who seriously think they do all of the above and even more; that is, selling space, publishing, creating community and being a mirror all at once, will dissipate its resources to achieve all of these things.
It would achieve some measure of success, of course. But it would ultimately suffer from the chronic anaemia that has afflicted much of the media for the last 20 years or so during which at least 25 major newspaper and magazine brands have folded*, advertising dwindled, circulation crashed to a combined figure of less than 120,000 copies and audiences moved in droves to video games, sports betting and Netflix.
We need to ask ourselves again: What really is the business of the media? What business are we into as editors, the professional backbone of media practice? The topic I have been invited to speak on, “Nigerian Media: Balancing Professionalism, Advocacy and Business,” suggests that the media should – or can – do many things at once. In a world of multitasking and activity addiction, that sounds cool, even enchanting.
But I have never been a fan of high wire walking, and it appears to me that one of the biggest problems with the media today is a love of high wire acts – acts that have drained it of the most vital nutrient for its survival, sustenance and renewal. That nutrient is focus.

 

The editor who says he’s in the business of news publishing will lock horns with the advert manager if there was ever a threat of encroachment into the slot for news, while the editor who is concerned about creating communities will be interested in the social media extensions of mainstream content

Let me at this point, colleagues, share with you a story: my business odyssey in the last two years. I think you should lend me your ears (and your hearts, too), because before venturing into business, I had the privilege of working, for a combined period of nearly 28 years, in two media houses with two completely different business cultures.
The first, PUNCH, is a laser-focused mono-product specialist; while the second, LEADERSHIP, has divergent and diversified business interests ranging from property to education, book publishing and conferences, much like the PUNCH of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
When I was leaving LEADERSHIP in January 2015, I had the benefit of two different business cultures; but in answering the inescapable question, what next, I realised that if I wanted to succeed, I had to face and be focused on just one thing and one thing alone – what I could do best.
I knew that was the right thing to do, but I’m sure that a number of you might agree that the rat race is hard to resist. I defied the commonsense narrative that I had told myself that it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t resist the temptation to be like the editors who framed the topic of this Keynote: I wanted to be a professional, an advocate and a businessman, all at once.
In a rat race – or rodentry – to use a more contemporary word from our Presidential Villa – more than one road leads to the market. So, we set out.
We invested in equipment including pre-press, printing and post-printing, European-sourced machinery, hired printers and machine operators and, of course, hired part of a warehouse in Kubwa to join the league of the who-is-who in Abuja printing and publishing.
But keep in mind that even though I’ve worked for nearly 30 years as a journalist and have had the privilege of directly managing printing presses in executive capacity over that time, printing has never been my core competence or focus.
Yet, within a short time of our opening shop, I noticed that 80 percent of our energy was going into managing the printing presses and the printers and operators, not to mention the supply chain of consumables and other related demons. The effort was not commensurate with the
returns.
The diversification into printing and publishing was not a bad thing in itself, but hardware was never our core competence. To save our business, we had to focus on the single most critical thing we know best: journalism, or, to put it slightly differently, providing meaningful content. That was how we started The Interview magazine.
You can learn all the acts of balancing professionalism with advocacy and business, if you are an editor, until and unless you get your journalism right and pursue it with single-minded focus, you will be wasting your time.
If our profession is in trouble today, it’s because we, the professionals, have sacrificed journalism on the altar of business and poor ethics.
Section 22 of the 1999 constitution charges the press to hold government accountable to the people. The Nigerian press has a heritage of resisting oppressive governments and standing up to bullies, in whichever guise they come.
We must ask ourselves how far we have defended and maintained this heritage, as a public trust. However we may dislike the non-legacy press, thank God for their courage and aggressiveness. The profession would have been poorer without these.
I’m absolutely convinced that robust and honest journalism is the one thing that we have been called to do; the thing that, once we get it right, other things will fall in place. It’s the thing without which any talk of advocacy or business will be a striving after wind.
This sounds like what we all know. Aren’t there some nuggets on business and advocacy that we can take away? Aren’t there practices or habits we can set aside in the quest for not just honest editorship but also to make our media organisations profitable businesses as well? In short, is focus on honest journalism and the pursuit of business incompatible?
I’m aware that many editors wear two caps – publisher and editor (or even editor-in-chief). I’m also aware that a number of editors are still employees, while not a few are kings and queens of the side hustle. In whichever camp we find ourselves, we often play the egg and chicken game, asking ourselves, why not good business first and, then, good journalism second? What’s the use of good journalism and bad business anyway?

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