Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian Newspaper, Debo Adesina on October 20, 2016 delivered the University of Lagos Mass Communication Alumni Association Distinguished Lecture.
In the lecture entitled Vessels in a storm, Adesina a 1986 graduate of the department reviewed the state of the journalism practice against the background of new media technological developments and offer tips on how traditional and aspiring journalists can survive the ‘storm’ in the profession.
I am extremely delighted to be here with you, fellow alumni, students and the faculty on this occasion of the 50th anniversary of our great department. It is also a great honour to stand before this distinguished gathering to deliver the Second in the Distinguished Lecture Series. I thank members of the Alumni Association for finding me worthy of this honour.
Mr President, I thank you.
One of my favourite books is titled All I really need to know, I learned in kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.
Let me just say we are all still students in the university of life but all I really needed to prepare me for that school, I learned in UNILAG.
I left this institution about 30 years ago but the values it instilled in me, especially through the Mass Communication Department, remain indelible and they have ordered my steps till now. I got a certificate and much more. I got an education and much more. There is indeed no greater honour than being a Great Akokite.
When I was admitted in 1984, our department honoured only the best and the brightest with its admission letter, printed in a particularly small type. The cut-off point for admission was the highest and we were rivaled only by Medicine and Law.
I was taught by some of the best known names in Communication in general and Journalism in particular. I am happy that some of those great teachers are still around not only in the department but even in this hall.
Prof Ralph Akinfeleye somehow still looks dashing, like the same man who, as Acting Head of Department, got me registered in 1984!
The late Professor Alfred Opubor was away to the Pan-African News Agency when I resumed class but he would return later to teach my final-year class.
Professor Onuora Nwuneli believed I was an ‘A’ student and put me under his wings but when I became too playful, he warned that I would ‘flunk it,’ one of his favourite phrases. He got me to sit up and I eventually made it. For that, I am grateful.
Professor Frank Okwuadigbo Ugboajah was uncompromising in his demand for excellence and even if you scored the highest mark in his class, he still asked, as the legendary Admiral Hyman Rickover always did of James Earl Carter, his best student in the US Naval Academy: did you actually do your best? Carter went on to become the President of the United States of America.
May God bless Ugboajah’s perfectionist soul.
Professor Olatunji Dare’s story as one of the best students this university and the Mass Communication Department ever produced inspired us all. After this school, I still had the fortune of having him as my teacher at The Guardian and he remains till date a great mentor.
Professor Idowu Sobowale’s voice was forever gentle and his patience with his students was such that you had to have a skull of steel or a brain of cotton wool not to grasp his teachings.
Olu Fadeyibi, Okevbe Adidi Uyo and Luke Uka Uche were generous with their advice and time but stingy with marks. If you worked hard,however, you had a friend in them.
Ladies and gentlemen, should anyone of you read dangling modifiers and run-on sentences in this presentation, blame not Ernest Adelumola Ogunade, that gem of a man who taught me Features and Editorial Writing, the only thing I do for a living today!
I dare not say here and now that words are inadequate to convey my gratitude to him for his devotion to us, his students, lest he turns in his grave.
If words are inadequate, what would you use, stones? That was his usual rebuke, in those days, of what he believed was an intellectually lazy way out of describing genuine emotions over a matter! May God rest his soul.
I was trained in this department to be a story teller. And that is the only thing I will do here today.
So forget the theme of this lecture. Having just grown past the age of 50 myself, I guess I am now an elder who has earned the right to tell some personal story.
I studied journalism here against my father’s wish.
He wanted me to be an accountant in the mould of an old friend of his by the name Abioye Oyelowo. I never met the man. But his name was a permanent presence in our home where every breaking day was never complete without career advice.
Or, what about being a lawyer, my father used to say!
But in addition to my love of reading and writing, I thought journalism was a glamorous job. I loved the newspaper and wanted my name out there every day. I wanted my face out there on television every day! It was just sexy! Or so I thought.
On one of our Mass Communication Days, my wildest fantasy about being a communication practitioner was then stoked when a few of our alumni came to celebrate with us and I saw what I thought would be my lot as soon as I got out of here.
In dandy suits and fancy cars, our visiting seniors, just by showing up, painted the picture of one rosy world of affluence into which I would soon graduate.
I saw a certain Martin Akpoveta who, we were told, was the Executive Director of Marketing at the household goods conglomerate, PZ Limited. Mr Ray Ekpu came in a green Mercedes Benz with registration number LA 6066 MF. I remember because I followed him and his friend, Alhaji Yakubu Mohammed around throughout their stay in the building until they entered their cars.
The late Dele Giwa, the 30th anniversary of whose murder was only yesterday, though did not graduate from this Department, came with them and between him and Yakubu Mohammed, I wouldn’t know the owner of LA 3222 KF, the silver Mercedes Benz in which they drove.
Well, that was me then.
You, the students of this department today, may wish to go to the car park now and I guarantee that you are not likely to be as inspired as I was then.
So, if you are here for a career in which you hope to make money, this is the time to change course!
If that sounds discouraging, wait for more. Life is now in turmoil for the communication practitioner as a result of technological advancement.
According to Nic Newman, a Researcher at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, in an article in digitalnewsreports.org, for most of us today, the smartphone has become not just our primary access point to the digital world but ‘the remote control for life itself.’
From available statistics, smartphones alone are already outselling Personal Computerss in the ratio of 5 to1. This, it is projected, will rise to about 10 to 1 in the next few years. With the reducing cost of these devices, smartphones are expected to reach around 80% of the world’s population by 2020.
In Nigeria, this is the picture too.
From Okaka to Osaka, from London to Lagos and from Bangkok to Ibadan, our mobile phones are proving more valuable companions in our journeys through life than anything else. And that includes food.
The touchscreen smartphone, according to those who keep records of such things, is less than 10 years old but every year,humanity becomes more addicted and dependent on it. A recent survey showed that in the United Kingdom, people collectively glance at their screens more than a billion times a day, while almost 60% of the people check their mobile phone within 15 minutes of getting out of bed.
Internet penetration may not be that high in Nigeria but in areas already covered, the numbers are not too different from these.
Already saturated with too much information, people stagger out of their homes wondering what to do with the huge credit of news in their hand-held bank!
For those of us who studied or are studying the art or science of information gathering and dissemination and whose lives depend on such, the end time, it appears, is here! We are already being crushed by this phenomenon called social media, enabled by advancement in technology.
Today’s conversation, therefore would seem nothing more than an attempt at consoling ourselves, that the funeral date for our livelihood has only been shifted, the elegy is on hold and the hope is that some way would be found out of the imminent death of our profession as we know it.
The outlook is indeed dire!
It is now being predicted that based on data collected by sensors, cameras and drones, the potential to reinvent local journalism in terms of reporting as well as analyzing issues and local events is very high.
And it may not be long before we see the emergence of automated content machines which rewrite popular trending copy from multiple sources. We may also soon see what the techies call ‘cyborg journalists’ in newsrooms; helpful robots built into Content Management Systems that automatically bring in facts, references and links to support stories.
According to Newman, the world of communications should also watch out for new innovative or disruptive phenomena like Newsflare, an online video news community and marketplace for user-generated video content. It currently supplies video to over 200 news organisations and rewards contributors with appropriate credit and financial payments. It aims to cover news that is supposedly too remote or too local for many traditional news organisations.
Also to look out for is The Quint, an Indian mobile first news site in English and Hindi which covers serious and lighter issues on a new digital publishing platform called The Quintype. It not only publishes stories but uses predictive analytics for scheduling articles, builds in social media management and contains an integrated advertisement engine. We should look out for it as a potential disruptor of the information dissemination industry.
With these and many other developments, it is little wonder that CareerCast, an online job portal recently reported that journalism comes first on the list of the world’s worst jobs in 2016. To arrive at this conclusion, the compilers weighed the environment(emotional, physical, and hours worked), income, (growth potential and salary), outlook(employment growth, income growth potential and unemployment) and some stress factors. In all, it was found that being a news reporter is the worst thing you can be.
Next to it but more than slightly better is being a logger, meaning the danger of being crushed by a falling tree is nothing compared to being a journalist. A disc jockey is also bad but much better off. A soldier with the risks of being deployed to the war front is endangered but certainly better off than a journalist. A pest control worker may stand a huge risk of exposure to deadly chemicals but he is not as imperiled as you and me. Even a taxi driver and a fire fighter are better off.
That is not all. It has also been reported that being a newspaper reporter is on the list of the worst jobs of the future!
This, of course, is occasioned in no small measure by the developments in technology which have reduced opportunities in the news business either in print or in broadcasting and made information gathering and dissemination for profit or for a living an all-comers’ affair.
Newspapers and magazines all over the world and especially in Nigeria are now appearing irregularly or disappearing completely from the newsstands altogether while television as well as radio stations are laying off employees as a result of shrinking advertising revenues, unbearable cost of production and reduced purchasing power of our consumers.
More importantly, technology which has led to an unbelievable explosion in the number of online news publications has created free access to information, however jaundiced, and compounded the dire situation in which I am and into which you, students, will soon plunge.
A whole newspaper operation these days needs not be more than a bag containing some digital cameras, wireless internet and laptops, from which just one man can perform all the functions of The Guardian, Punch and Vanguard rolled into one or be a one-man content generation and distribution corporation.
Even the public relations and advertising middle-man can be cut out by an enterprising client armed with a few gadgets and a good rolodex of the public it wants to reach.
No doubt, the Internet has been a disruptor of the traditional media as well as the creator of independent journalism or communication practice, in an era in which information is gathered so easily and distributed by so many, to so many, so effortlessly or cheaply. It has changed not only the landscape of available information, and the speed with which we have access to that information but also the ease of distribution, leaving a whole profession, some would say a calling, in turmoil.
For my friends who are just about to begin a career in journalism or in any arm of the communication industry like advertising and public relations, there can hardly be a tougher time than now.
To borrow Mark Wallace’s and Betn Knobel’s words, “the thriving space” for the journalist is shrinking “because fewer and fewer consumers of either newspaper or broadcast news are willing to pay for something they can get for free on the Internet.” So, not only are new jobs in traditional journalism largely unavailable these days, old ones are being lost as a result of the reasons earlier stated and because of a terribly shrinking economy. Many magazines, newspapers, radio, television stations, public relations and advertising firms are either closing shop or finding it difficult to pay employees’ wages.
But, it must be stated that this is not the end of the world for the communicator.
As this situation persists, aspiring journalists and communication practitioners only need to adapt to the changes at hand, mould them to their own advantages in order to survive in an individualized world of communication. We should also be consoled by the truth that even as the media landscape changes and the Internet disrupts the media further, those who do the extra-ordinary in their craft will thrive.
The medium may change, but the essentials of quality journalism remain the same. “Adapting to change will challenge us all,” says Marcus Brauchli of the Washington Post. “But the fundamentals of journalism will continue to matter whatever shape the new information ecosystem takes.”
What this means is that as much as the media landscape may be changing, there will always be a need for good journalism. Democracy and good governance can only thrive where the leaders are held accountable by an independent and free press and where communication is not only open but vibrant. For as long as this is the case, people will pay for journalism. But only the very good variety.
The battle for relevance
Indeed, the battle the average journalist faces today is not just one of survival but of usefulness. With technology and the participation of almost all citizens in one form of reporting or the other, not only would the journalism have to be good, it must be useful.
Of course, everyone knows that all of us need to start blogging since that is the in-thing. We, as communicators, must make new technology our friends for without it we are out of business. We need to master our skills at reporting accurately and editing both words, images and all sorts.
But without an understanding of the audience the journalist or any communication specialist wants to serve in the new age, he or she cannot be useful to that audience. Therefore, our most urgent duty is to put ourselves in the position of those users of our products or services or form a realistic idea of their needs if anything useful and for which any form of payment would be made, would be put out.
This can only happen, as Jay Rosen, a journalism teacher says, however, when we the journalists accept that there is already ‘a shift in power.’
His observation that we now live in an age characterized by a huge shift in power from the big media as we know them to the people, the consumers themselves, is incontrovertible.
The phenomenal ease with which the first lucky recipients of any information on any issue or event alert others, say, on Twitter today or get the social networks busy with instant conversation on the subject was not even within the reach of the most fertile imagination a few years ago.
But because of the devices of media content production readily available to people today, they are as effectively “connected to each other horizontally as they are vertically up to the traditional big media.”
Even though, again, internet penetration is still relatively low especially in Nigeria, at about 20%, but it is growing.
And there is a school of thought now which says wi-fi rights are human rights, meaning all citizens deserve access to the internet.
When this happens, and it is only a matter of time, given the investment companies like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook are making in satellite communication with a view to making wi-fi cheaper or even free everywhere, a certain technodemocracy will further strip the journalist of his monopoly on information gathering and dissemination, making him almost irrelevant if not ‘useless.’
It is in this quagmire that the journalist must now think of his or her audience in order to be relevant or useful.
Change as a homestead
But it is necessary at this point to record that the communication or journalism world has always lived on change. Revolutionary or even disruptive as the current one is, change will continue. Journalism or its practitioners, therefore, will not have the luxury of a change of address from the domain called change.
To understand why journalism must thrive in Change, we must first accept one fact: this is a calling which is founded on the idea that the affairs of a society belong to the people of that society and their right to know is not only inalienable, it is one they naturally want to exercise.
The confidence of the people is boosted by transparency in the way their affairs are conducted and as many things as make them participate in matters concerning them would be welcome. Hence the advent of printing and the distribution of the printed word in various forms like books and newspapers centuries ago not only excited them and gave them a voice in public debates, it made something of mini-gods out of those whose lot it was to supply the news. The journalist became by reason of his job a dealer of ideas for the people’s empowerment and something of a superior being.
As the hunger for information by the people in order to form an independent and reasoned opinion on all things and to make the appropriate decisions grew, as their participation in their own affairs, on account of the product, information, sold to them by the journalist grew, the audience of the mass media increased and the relevance of the journalist naturally grew.
This then led to various transformations in the print and broadcast media as all the arts, sciences and technologies were mined for building such platforms as could reach the widest possible audience.
Printing was invented in the fifteenth century and for hundreds of years afterwards, the print media was used as the most powerful tool to spread news and information to the masses.
Mechanical power was applied to the printing press in the 19th century and later, new developments caused the mechanical system to be replaced by the electronic and, eventually, the digital printing.
The steam-powered printing press introduced by Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer in 1812 helped to reduce the cost of printing, made newspapers cheaper and available to a wider audience.
When the Telegraph was invented in 1844, it transformed the media with its signature speed and timeliness and this enabled relatively more immediate reporting and dissemination of news, thus empowering the media practitioner the more.
Phonograph, photography and cinema came with the ability to disseminate images immediately. Telephony, radio and television followed to widen the platforms and create greater opportunities for reaching wider and larger audiences.
Wireless broadcasting, of course, arrived and disrupted the system in ways yet unseen before then.
The point here is that each advancement in technology has inspired changes in the way the people are served by the media. The speed with which information is made available to the audience has not only accelerated at each turn, the range and the depth have also increased. Think of how the telephone came and allowed reporters to phone stories in from distant locations, speeding up the process of creating a publication, and enabling stories to get into print on that day’s edition. That was something hitherto impossible and news was less than new.
Indeed, technology has always been disruptive of the entire mass media landscape and has always shaped every era in magnificent ways. After what was thought the best thing to happen to print media with advancement in the speed of printing machines, television came around 1936 and it became the most powerful medium of communication and information with its moving images and power of immediacy.
The technological revolution in the media today is, of course, a different kind. It is very disruptive of the status quo almost to the point of causing a scare.
The monopoly is broken
Even though the internet or the new digital revolution offers some advantages to the traditional media, especially those members of the old oligopoly smart enough to embrace it, the level of access to information is unprecedented and the volume is immeasurable, giving the people the kind of power hitherto reserved for kings, media kings.
And this is the challenge the professional journalist faces today: The hold on power by the all-knowing journalist is broken.
As Rosen notes, members of the audience who used to be beholden unto the professional communicator, are now horizontally connected to themselves. They have the instrument with which they not only produce news and other contents, they also share. Their dependence on us therefore has phenomenally reduced, also taking with them our bread, butter and children’s school fees!
Free or freed as such, only a new way of satisfying this audience can make journalism thrive. And to satisfy the audience, the journalist must understand this audience as one that is capable of producing the same content he wants to sell to them.
So, there is hardly anything to add to what Rosen says: Those who would thrive in the new order must first specialize in seeing their audience as a public already empowered to be the media themselves, the consumers who have the capacity and tools for producing the same ware.
Because the character of the audience has changed, the communicator’s or the journalist’s perception of it and how to serve it must, of necessity, change.
The result is that communication practitioners will now have to be less focused on the particular platforms and, instead, see the consumers of our content as users of that content. So in place of readers of newspapers, you have users of whatever it is in the newspaper. In place of viewers of television or advertising content, you have users. So, the tool you deploy in reaching them automatically would become less important and what you are reaching them with is the ultimate.
But your understanding of those users will determine how useful a journalist or supplier of information you will be to them.
With this must come an acceptance of the fact that the audience has as much knowledge, experience and ideas as the journalist or communicator. A smart traditional media organization therefore must
of what they generate, refine it for the best and make it irresistible for them to consume. find a way to get some of the audience’s experience, ideas and knowledge into its operations toimprove its product. Any organization that ignores this may be choosing a prime location in the cemetery for its own entombment.
Our ability as communicators to research, report, edit, analyse or interprete issues in ways that build for us a trustworthy brand is unassailable. Our professional standards are a great selling point. Yet, we must include our users in our operations, take in as much as possible
This, of course, is no easy task but one that calls for the best in us.
Distinct Content
Humility is important in this challenging era.
And we must begin by admitting, as Rosen candidly says, that “the journalist is just a heightened case of an informed citizen, not a special class.”
We must admit that our profession is not rocket science! “A professional journalist knows how to get information, ask questions, tell stories and connect isolated facts. These are not esoteric or specialized skills, just heightened versions of things any smart citizen should be able to do.”
But, if we want our special status maintained, and it must be maintained,we must practice with the mentality and indeed the reality of one with superior knowledge .
Since those in the audience can produce media content and share it among themselves or with the world, what then is left of the professional journalist? What is there to listen to from one who produces nothing better than the audience?
Being CNN, The Guardian or The Punch or any other big media brand alone is not enough to bring the audience or sustain their attention.
The professional journalist’s special status and authority therefore will only be guaranteed by the special content he serves. This means going the extra mile to give the audience something they just don’t have even with what they gather and share among themselves.
A superior or more revelatory angle to the story, a deeper insight into the event or a comprehensive analysis or interpretation that only a trained or well-honed journalistic skills could have afforded
The journalist’s indispensability will be guaranteed only when he does journalism better than the ordinary and speaks truth to power louder.
It is the reality now that anywhere you turn, someone has a camera or any other media tool and can do exactly what we do for a living. Their output may sometimes be poor in quality and a lot of false stories are peddled by those we now know as citizen journalists. Notwithstanding, the competition is real and life-threatening to professionals whose monopoly on news gathering and dissemination has been broken.
Any blogger can get the same digital distribution of his news or content as the publisher of The Guardian, The Punch or ThisDay. Anyone with a smartphone can broadcast online as much as John Momoh’s Channels Television
However, there is redemption: the professional journalist still does what those non-professional platforms can never do or what they do poorly: We can bring depth and breadth to the message or report. We have the power of research and the ability to get the reader, viewer or, the user immersed in what we offer. We have the ability and training to give our audience original thinking. We can make an art of the story and draw readers or users into that story. We can guide the audience with our voice or our writing. We can make sense of the mess the citizen journalist dishes out with the power of editing rooted in objectivity and sound judgement.
Judgment, indeed, is one of the qualities that distinguishes us from the ordinary. It is almost like a divine attribute, that ability to imagine what would play with the user, weigh it on the mental scale and determine how to put it out in what way.
We develop this by receiving sound training in an institution like this, by constantly training, re-training ourselves in the art and by the experiences on the job, which cannot be taught by any gadget.
So, mired in the soggy terrain of information overload and stripped of the monopoly on the powers of old, the professional journalist has only one edge left to keep him relevant, useful or even commercially viable: the integrity of what he or she serves the audience.
Content is king, it is said. And it will be king for as long as it has integrity.
To confer integrity on the content, the journalist has a lot to do.
Original thinking will always win. And that must begin with the platform too, whether print, broadcast or digital.
When Henry Luce and Brit Hadden started their iconic magazine, TIME, their prospectus described how the new magazine would differ from Literary Digest, then the reigning weekly. “The Digest, in giving both sides of a question, gives little or no hint as to which side it considers to be right,” Luce and Hadden said. “Time gives both sides, but clearly indicates which side it believes to have the stronger position.”
When the quartet of Ray Ekpu, Dele Giwa, Yakubu Mohammed and Dan Agbese started their magazine, they must have studied Luce and Hadden so well for they did not tip-toe into the Nigerian print media space, they roared with an original product called NEWSWATCH, a magazine on which my generation of journalists feasted with relish for inspiration. The language was refreshing and the depth of their coverage was unmatched. The Guardian had earlier revolutionized the newspaper industry by bringing in a different kind of intellectual depth into reporting and writing in the newspaper. It made the opinion and editorial pages a unique attraction and a selling point. Original thinking will always win even in this internet age. So a niche must be carved.
Let us not be deceived. To produce quality content that will make money while not sacrificing good journalism is not easy. Yet, only by creating a distinct content on a distinct platform can you stand out.
A content that is authoritative. And to be authoritative is to have superior knowledge of a subject and possess the ability to narrate it in superior language.
The journalistic content that will sell must take its agenda-setting role as seriously as possible. It must set the tone for and influence the public agenda.
We must offer not just the story but also the context and comprehensively too. Depth, perspective and meaning will sell.
A journalism that is very definitive, the content of which is one where the reporter, writer or broadcaster has no angle unexplored or leaves no question unanswered will certainly find users.
A recognition of the force of facts is imperative. And this is one advantage over the competition. Facts will forever remain sacred and only content that is factual will sell.
Also, it is human nature not to ignore a story in which man finds himself or his like. So relevance is key. Contents that are relevan to people in the audience therefore will sell.
As journalists, we are in a passion job or in a calling and by its very nature, journalism practice is one calling at the heart of the battle for change.
As Harry Luce once put it, journalists are in command of a sector of combatants in the battle for the expansion of the frontiers of freedom and responsibility.
Editor of NEWSWEEK magazine from 1960 to 1976, Osborn Elliott also believed that journalism would be nothing if it is not for social reforms and in the service of the society.
To succeed at it therefore, there must be a higher consideration than material gains. Which probably explains why Elliott was very emphatic that when he became the dean at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia, he and his colleagues agreed on one fact: they could not teach journalism. Rather, they could only teach journalists.
What lessons?
To be accurate and objective.
To appreciate all sides of a story.
To appreciate the riches and beauty of the English language.
To show respect for and highlight the plight of those upon whom life often heaps its indignities.
Even with the threats from technology-driven platforms or phenomena, we will win by dedicating ourselves to the old, time-tested ideals of journalism.
A deep commitment to hard work, capacity for long hours and an ability to research our subjects thoroughly will stand us out. As Elliot wrote, a healthy respect for the riches and use of language to communicate our contents in an engaging way will stand us out just as a strong drive and attention to detail.
The new dawn
Of course, to ask anyone in communication today to embrace technology and make it a friend is like preaching the value of oxygen to life.
Against this background, here are some realities we have to live with:
Traditional media, especially print, are shrinking, even though they still make most of the communication industry’s revenues (about 90 percent globally). And that is why I still have a job at all!
Digital remains a small piece of revenue pie, though it is growing.
While there is no known quick solution to making more money with digital, in our own society yet, this is certain to change anytime soon!
And we cannot continue to deny this: the future is digital. We must all get on board one way or the other, and quickly too.
As Jeff Bezos of Amazon counsels, those of us in traditional media today must ‘‘invest money in more and better talent, new technology, customer relations, a modern multimedia newsrooms and relevant content.”
Mark Zuckerberg says “On agreement, we are already seeing that mobile users are more likely to be daily active users than desktop users. They are more likely to use Facebook six or seven days a week.”
Mark Thompson, the chief executive of New York Times says “the battle will be won on the smartphone” and
Edward Rousel of the Wall Street Journal agrees that “the theme across the world now is smartphones and what we can do on them.”
Chad Millman who is Vice President of Digital Content at ESPN says Mobile is everything and “we must always be thinking about mobile first.”
Sangeet Choudary, founder of Platform Strategy Labs is of the opinion that “today we pay the price for the sins of the past. Users are destroying publishers’ revenues with adblockers. Internet giants have sniffed an opportunity to drag us into their walled gardens and eat us alive. It is high time for news publishers gave strategic priority to mobile and improve the user experience.”
Fredric Filloux aptly captures it all thus: “The main cause of legacy media failure to make a successful digital transition lies in its inability to overhaul its ancestral culture.”
So, the reality of the communication or media landscape today is mobile first and mobile is everything.
The communicator must go where his or her audiences are, and audiences are increasingly on smartphones.
In a recent report, The Standard Group of Kenya has statistics showing that the number of smartphone users in Middle East and Africa in 2016 is estimated to reach 123.7 million.
We must therefore inculcate the audience first culture and adapt to its behavior.
Mobile is the ideal platform to reach younger users of media content and it will also help to engage better with older ones
Communication practitioners must pitch for the global and local audience and reach them in different formats, platforms and narratives.
Mobile Phones, they say, now rule the World.
Data shows visits to digital media have tripled since 2010, and have increased 35% since 2013.
Smartphone use has increased by 78% and is responsible for 92% of attention growth on digital platforms.
The Good news is: Mobile phone has the capacity to be the greatest ally of traditional media companies.
So, publishers and broadcasters must strive to reach readers, viewers at the right time, in the right way and on the right platform.
Having said all of these about the platforms or tools, the journalist or the communicator remains the ultimate game-changer.
So I will say this: you can fail in anything else but never fail to get the right education, especially from a place like this! And never fail to live a life of constant education by reading.
Content will always be the most important aspect of communication or journalism. And all of the factors earlier stated will enable you generate the kind of content that will appeal to the sophisticated audience.
That content must have one thing: Trust. The truth. Or integrity.
There has been a lot of technological advancement in the banking industry and this may have led to downsizing, right-sizing, lay-offs and all sorts in that industry but it has not wiped out bankers. We still entrust our money to people and not to those machines!
Because of only one consideration: trust!
So, technology will evolve and platforms will increase for selling content. But the maker of content is the constant.
How trustworthy then is he and that content?
Are you a source, a newspaper, a broadcast station or a multi-media platform the audience can trust? Are you one they can bank on?
The answer to that will define your relevance, your usefulness, your commercial viability.
As a communicator, you are a vessel now in a storm. But a vessel for what? For the truth or for its opposite?
Your answer will determine what the users make of you and how you weather the storm in which we all now sail.
Thank you.
NOTES
.Rosen, Jay: The Journalists Known As The Media(My advice to the Next
Generation) September 10, 2010
.Newman, Nic: digitalnewsreport.org (2016 Predictions)
.Wallace, Mark and Knobel, Beth: Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists
.Filoux, Frederick: mondaynote.com
.http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycentre.org
.http://www.careercast.com
.Anderson, Chris:(2010)The Best American Magazine Writing(Introduction), Columbia University Press
2
