Today, every unemployed or unemployable journalist wants to carry a ‘dignified’ title of being a publisher, hence the rash of poorly edited and managed online publications in the cyberspace. It has become a case of ‘read one and you’ve read all’; no variety, no nuance, and no depth. News stories now read the same and flat! Features have become tasteless and investigation poor, if any.
All the metrics for legacy news media are headed in the same direction: less revenue, far fewer reporters and editors, less profit to reinvest and less community clout. – Rory O’Connor
It is not in doubt that journalism around the world is undergoing tremendous changes and threat: technology, dictatorship, problems of funding and self-inflicted wounds (knowingly or unknowingly) inflicted by journalists on the profession in recent times, are some of the threats confronting the profession.
Some of these problems are not new. They are age old and only present themselves in new formats. For instance, in the 1980s when Ray Ekpu was removed as editor of the high-flying Sunday Times, the paper whose sales figures he had moved up significantly, and was sent to the Business Times as editor. He was determined to recreate the magic that he performed at Sunday Times there. However, when the atmosphere became too toxic and he saw that he was not given the free hand needed to change the staid and dull nature of business reporting as editor, he had to move to the Concord Group at the invitation of his friend (the late) Dele Giwa. He was made chair of the Editorial Board there.
