Before the requiem: Internet and the fate of the newspaper industry in Nigeria

Dele ODUNLAMI, PhD

Abstract Research has shown that the greatest challenge facing newspapers in the digital age is the changing modes of content packaging and distribution through the Internet and telephony with its high speed of delivery in more accessible formats like news blogs, text alerts, news updates, including podcasts and user - generated content (UGC) .The issue however is how practitioners in the newspaper business can fashion out an appropriate business model that will leverage on the unfolding dynamics for interactional content and enhanced bottom-line. This paper examines the fate of the newspaper business in Nigeria against the backdrop of emerging global trends in the information age. Using the methodologies of document analysis and library study, the survival options left for the newspaper in contemporary times in the wake of the increasing competitions from the Internet and other broadcast media are weighed. Because this development could have far-reaching implications for 's economy and the psychology of media personnel in this crucial sector, the paper concludes that if Philip Meyer's (2004) prediction that the final copy of the final newspaper would appear on somebody's doorstep one day in 2043 in America will not occur in Nigeria, newspaper journalists must creatively exploit the benefits of media convergence, especially the Internet, in order to make technological changes work for and not against the industry.

Key words: Media Convergence, Internet, Information Age, User-Generated Content, Digital Age

Introduction One of the paradoxes of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) induced globalised world is the sudden twist in the fate of the newspaper and its personnel. Within the spate of two decades or less, the promises held by advances in Information and Communication Technologies have not only boosted the fortune of mass media networks in terms of message fidelity, velocity, salience including the bottom line, they have equally birthed the prospects of atrophy for an industry that had once revelled in the euphoria of its golden age. The convergence of the news media typified in the Internet and the World Wide Web is compelling communication scholars to ponder the prospects of the newspaper. While newspapers are not the only media affected by the emerging trends of technological innovations, they seem, by the nature of their operations, to occupy the front row of the vulnerable class whose survival and modus operandi depend largely on a complete reconfiguration and fine-tuning with the realities of the online and digital age. Kurzweil (1999), Meyer (2004), and Alterman (2008) are among scholars who have drawn the world's attention to the imminent death of the newspaper. In a write- up titled: Out of Print: the death and life of the American Newspaper, Alterman (2008) contends that:

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Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago. (pg.3)

Quoting the speech of the executive editor of the Times, Bill Keller recently in London, Alterman (2008) reports further that: At places where editors and publishers gather, the mood these days is funereal. Editors ask one another, 'How are you?' in that sober tone one employs with friends who have just emerged from rehab or a messy divorce. (pg.4)

On his part, Meyer (2004) predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear on somebody's doorstep one day in 2043, which is just a couple of decades away. Similarly, Kurzweil (1999), who works with devices for the blind, predicts that by 2030, molecule size brain implants receiving images and words will eliminate the need for texts. Graham and Hill (2009) report that readership and newspaper sales declined in the United Kingdom from 2.1 billion in the year 2000 to 1.7 billion in 2005 and 1.4 billion in 2010. According to Graham and Hill, in 2008, The Independent announced job cuts, while in January 2009 , the Associated Newspapers conglomerate divested its controlling shares in the London Evening Standard due to a twenty four per cent drop in advert revenues in the preceding year. Similarly, in March 2009, Daily Mail and General Trust announced that job cuts would be deeper than expected in their newspapers which include the Leicester Mercury, the Bristol Evening Post and The Derby Telegraph. Writing on the trend in the United States of America, Saperstein (2014) reports that in 2013, total revenue in the newspaper industry decreased by 2.6%, which translated to over a billion dollars in lost funds. According to Saperstein, newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The USA Today have all experienced major losses with the attendant consequences of job losses for their most experienced newsroom staff obviously because of their high salaries.

In Africa, particularly in Nigeria, there is the palpable fear that should the present trend (declining fortunes of newspapers) continue, the year 2043 might indeed be just too far. Although correct data on the actual number of newspapers in Nigeria is difficult to get, information gleaned from the Nigerian Guild of Editors' website confirmed that only twenty seven national dailies, five magazines and eight online media remain active in Nigeria as of October 2016. (http://ngeditors.org.ng). The implication is that a good number of newspapers have folded up in the country in the last two decades while others have simply transmuted through buy-outs or acquisition. Examples include The Post Express, The , Sketch, Third Eye, Mirror, The Republic, The entire Concord stable, , , Compass, Westerner, The News etc. Hence, for a medium that has survived a similar challenge in the fifties owing to the invention of television, the versatility and increasing access to the Internet as a public sphere in the last two decades has challenged the traditional hegemony of the newspaper as the preferred source of daily

96 Internet and the fate of the newspaper industry in Nigeria news by the audience (Sobowale, Sowunmi and Emmanuel 2014; Oso 2007 and Odunlami 2013). It therefore appears that what radio and television could not accomplish in their golden ages, the Internet is about to accomplish in less than a decade of its evolution.

Literature Review The newspaper is the global precursor of the modern mass media. As a medium of mass communication, newspaper owed its origin to the invention of the movable types by the Chinese and Koreans in the 15th century. This was later perfected and integrated to the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in Germany in 1453 leading to the printing of the bible. The emergence of the printing press led to the dissemination of news as newspapers sprang up across Europe in the beginning of the 17th century (Baran 2009:56). Other conditions that aided the popularity of the newspaper as a platform of mass communication in the western world were the upsurge in mass literacy, political consciousness and the emergence of a mass audience (Dominick, 2009).

According to Pate (2011), the history of the newspaper in Nigeria is comparatively young in global terms while by African standards, it is one of the oldest and by far the richest in traditions, pluralism and development. Until recently, the newspaper was the dominant medium of mass communication in Nigeria and the major weapon the British used to colonise the country and also the “death weapon the nationalists employed to break the shackles of colonialism and obtained for their people political independence (Sobowale, Sowunmi & Emmanuel, 2014: 468). The changing fortune of newspapers has engaged the attention of media scholars at many fora. Hibbert (1999), Alterman (2008),Oso (2007), Graham and Jill (2009), Chi (2014) and Sobowale et al (2014) are few of the scholars noted for their documented evidences on the dwindling fortune of the newspaper in the digital age. In one of his writings on this development, Hibbert (1999) argues that: It's hardly possible to open a European or American newspaper these days without reading yet another story of a loss making internet start- up hitting a record stock value. Internet service providers vie with each other to offer a service which appears more free than the competition. Technology pundits regularly predict the death of the book and the newspaper, made irrelevant by electronic publishing. Companies offer goods and services at knock-down prices across the internet and across national boundaries, leaving no physical evidence of the transaction for the taxman (pg. 394).

Commenting on the fate of the newspaper in the Nigerian context, although scholars like Sobowale et al (2014) acknowledged the role of the Internet in the dwindling fortune of newspapers, they however blamed the development on newspaper proprietors/editors' loss of focus soon after the struggle for independence was won against the colonialists. According to Sobowale et al (2014): The national interest that once was the rallying point for all the papers

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soon became the disintegrating factor amongst them. Once the common enemy the papers fought with determination was no longer there, the proprietors, who now became the political tigers in their areas of influence, turned their papers against one another. Each, rather than protecting the nation's interest, devoted its attention to fighting for base and selfish gains of the proprietor or the parochial benefits of its geographical location or ethnic nationality. Thus, what would have been a solid foundation for a united country became the nightmare of a nation. The fortunes of the papers began to dwindle (pg.470).

Apart from the above, other factors adduced for the failing prospects of newspapers in Nigeria are: declining reading culture, economic downturn, free readers' association, ICTs, fiscal economic policies, human problems and social pressures. (Sobowale et al (2014).

The Nigerian Print Media Landscape In Nigeria, the discernible structure of media ownership can be categorized into three -- the Federal Government, the State Government and the Private Individuals. These structures reflected in the operations of the newspaper business in the country until the Daily Times which was the most successful and commercially viable government newspaper was privatised and sold to the Fidelis Anosike-led Folio Communications for One billion naira (€650000) under mysterious circumstances in the third republic (Nworah, 2009). Since the exit of the Daily Times and other government-owned dailies from the newspaper market, newspaper business has become more of private than public ownership in Nigeria with the largest concentration located in the Lagos/Ibadan southern axis and the Kaduna/Abuja northern axis of the country. Essentially, newspapers still enjoy the traditional benefit of the print media in terms of their high pass-on rate, while quite a number of them are taking advantage of new digital technology to improve their quality.

The newspaper's share of the Nigerian media market as at 2007 was just 12% which was far below radio's share of 51% and television's 29%. (Adekanmbi, 2007).Meanwhile, the Internet, still an evolving medium, continues to record significant growth. Nigeria's Internet penetration rate in 2016 is estimated at 59.4% (the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC 2016). This is an improvement over the preceding year's figure of 51% Internet density ( Newspaper, April 22, 2016). The prospects of the Internet have since increased in the nation's media market compared to the 0.44% rate reported in a study conducted by Sonaike in 2001. The NCC's estimates showed that Internet access in Nigeria as at 2015 was 86.9 million. Nigeria's population is currently put at 170 million. The contentious issues affecting the Nigerian newspaper include, but are by no means limited to those of audience fragmentation, arbitrary advert rates, poor employee remuneration, ethical violations, dwindling revenue, increased tariffs on production inputs such as newsprint, ink, and hardware's, paralysis in the nation's basic infrastructure especially electricity etc. However, in spite of these challenges, the print media,

98 Internet and the fate of the newspaper industry in Nigeria especially the newspaper, appear to be the primary agenda setters in the country because they remain the public sphere platform for vibrant editorials, opinions and analyses by the literate public.

Before the advent of the Internet, the major constraints in the way of newspaper circulation were essentially those of inflation as often reflected in the hike in cover prices, its attendant impact on readers' purchasing power and poor reading culture. Ordinarily, this trend ought to result in the reduction of advert rates charged by newspaper since projections in advert rates are calculated in cost per thousand of readers. In Nigeria however, advert rates of most Nigerian dailies remain largely speculative and arbitrary because the actual print runs of most newspapers are usually kept as trade secrets. The 'common sense' rule often applied is the neighbour or competitor's effects in which a newspaper's management spies on rivals to determine 'appropriate' benchmark in advert takings without regard to the actual market performance of the dailies. Investigations by this researcher showed that the average rate per page of a typical product display or political advert in national dailies in Nigeria costs between four hundred thousand and six hundred thousand naira. In fact, some newspapers like This Day, and charge higher rates.

The primacy of advert revenues in newspaper publishing in the country is attested to by the constant displacement of news pages including front and back pages, mastheads, folios and all for the 'almighty' wrap around as occasions demand. A typical wrap around (front and back pages) is in the neighbourhood of twelve (12) million naira per edition for newspapers like The Nation for political stories while others negotiate higher or lower depending on the circumstance. In spite of these commercial realities, the fate of the Nigerian newspaper remains as gloomy as ever. Editors and proprietors continue to bemoan the steep decline in advertising revenues as their traditional main source of capital (Sobowale et al 2014). In the western world, it is reported that economic recession, the worst since the Second World War has combined with the lure of the Internet to rob the newspaper industry of its annual advertising revenue. A conservative report estimates the loss at $20 billion less than those of the last three years (Sapenstein, 2014). Estimates are difficult to get in Nigeria, but it is unlikely that the situation can be different from that of the global trend. While Internet penetration has improved considerably in Nigeria, the fact remains that the little percentage or number of working class elites who are the traditional audience of newspapers are exploring cheaper options for their information needs through the Net. This is made easier by the fact that telecommunication network providers like MTN, Globacom, Etisalat, Airtel and others are running neck-to-neck to further liberalise access to the Internet through the provision of an ever-growing list of programme/product packages at sometimes close-to-free charges/rates.

The Internet and Newspaper Journalism in Nigeria The newspaper industry is a major beneficiary of Information and Communication Technology, especially the Internet. Innovations in computer and satellite technology

99 Babcock Journal Of Mass Communication worldwide revolutionized the news gathering, processing, and production and distribution process. Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR) and Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) amongst others define the technological and paradigmatic shifts in the news business. Apart from the speed of information transfer and exchange, the Internet offers a cheaper and more versatile option for newspapering as practitioners, more than ever before, have found it cheaper to post the electronic versions of their publications online for wider readership and corporate prestige. While the enlarged scope of the newspaper audience made available through the Internet has broadened the prospects of advertising revenues for newspapers, the Internet, more than the expected benefits, has indeed undermined the commercial potentials of the print media. This awareness is indeed a global concern that has instigated the aggressive marketing strategies which some early adopters of the Internet platform like The Punch, This Day, The Nation, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Trust among others, source for adverts and subscriptions through their online copies. This marketing posture contrasts with the cautious approach of other late adopters who prefer to first watch developments before they embark on a full plunge in what they see as the inchoate tide of the Internet.

But be that as it may, the lot of the newspaper journalist has witnessed some dramatic transformations, especially on the production side because of the Internet. Whether it is the e-mail, chat and Instant Messaging (IM), the Bulletin Board System (BBS), Audio- Video Conferencing, the Blog, or the latest interactive fads like the Face Book, Twitter, I- report, Listening post etc., the veil is being lifted from the face of journalism. Nigerian newspaper journalists seem now better equipped to function professionally thus reducing the hitherto yawning technological gap between them and their colleagues in the developed world. For instance, through the e-mail, a fast and cheap option to file stories from distant beats to newsrooms is now a routine experience. Besides, stories filed are being edited online (Computer- Aided Reporting, CAR), desktop publishing in a network that eliminates the old encumbrances of the 'cut and paste' era and resource-wasting erstwhile production format. Similarly, reporters now have the benefit of abundant reference materials to enrich their stories at the touch of a button through numerous search engines such as Yahoo!, Google, Infoseek etc.

The Performance of Nigerian Online Newspapers In spite of its over a - decade-long existence, the Internet remains an evolving phenomenon albeit inchoate but almost unlimited potentials. The diffusion of Internet technology accounting for the current access of 86.9 million according to the NCC indicates that the growth in the communications sector defies the general lull in nation's economy. Most, if not all, Nigerian newspapers are now online. However, the online marketing strategy of Nigerian newspapers is understandably at a rudimentary level, unlike their counterparts in countries like India, Indonesia and the developed world. Essentially Nigerian newspapers' online marketing strategy, according to Mbachu (2003), comprises making fresh news available, free of charge, while charging money for retrievals from their archives. Nigerian newspapers also, like their foreign counterparts, derive revenues from advertising by drawing visitors to their sites through free offer of

100 Internet and the fate of the newspaper industry in Nigeria content, and later use such statistics of site visitors or hits as it is called, to attract advertising revenue. This is the electronic equivalence of advertising rate projection in the print sales format through cost per thousand circulation copies.

Aside from the above, quite a number of Nigerian newspapers are already taking advantage of the trend of Internet syndication with online organisations like Allafrica.com, Reuters, AP-DowJones, Bloomberg, NewsEdge and Lexis-Nexis to make their content available for international audiences. In spite of these vistas of opportunities offered by the Internet, global trends suggest that revenues derived from online marketing drives are not enough to tilt the scale of profitability in favour of the contemporary newspaper. Rather, the use of the Internet coupled with the global trends in circulation and advertising as Alterman (2008) contends, “has made daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive and created a palpable sense of doom (pg.4).” From the United States to Britain and elsewhere, there are reports of newspaper conglomerates losing considering shares of their market value in the past three years. Examples include Independent, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal including The New York Times whose stock had declined by fifty-four per cent since 2004. This is a sharp contrast from what used to be when newspapers got accustomed to operating as high margin monopolies (Sapenstein, 2014).

The plight of the Nigerian newspaper is best appreciated against this global trend. As the old proverb goes, if gold could rust, what is the fate of other metals? If newspapers in developed climes with larger audiences, better supporting infrastructure, and more effective utilization of Internet resources cannot balance their accounts, could local peculiarities and the contextual media ecology shield newspapers in Nigeria from the consequences of these global trends?

Internet and the Fate of the Nigerian Newspaper In spite of its pervasiveness, the twist in the commercial prospects of the newspaper is not a world-wide event. Reports from India indicate a relatively low Internet penetration of 7.1% as only 50% of households own a TV while newspapers continue to dominate the media landscape in the country (Graham and Jill, 2009). The question that arises then is why does the Nigerian newspaper situation appear so precarious given her rising Internet density? Prior to the evolution and the embrace of ICTs, especially the Internet, in Nigeria, newspaper proprietors had engaged their broadcast colleagues in a battle of wits over revenue drives. The Nigerian Guild of Editors had often complained that radio and television were contributing to the revenue misfortune of newspapers through unregulated reviews of newspaper stories. The presupposition was that such reviews accounted for low circulation as most audiences felt no need to buy dailies once they have listened or watched the reviews on the electronic media. In defence, broadcast practitioners had argued that rather than reduce newspaper circulation, they have aided it by 'helping' to whet prospective readers' appetites through such reviews.

However, the fact and reality of media convergence embedded in the Internet including its

101 Babcock Journal Of Mass Communication ambiguity as a bat-like medium has reconfigured the entire media settings globally such that old arguments, theories or positions now appear puerile. Badgikian (2004) sums it up when he avers that “the Internet has become both a competitor against the printed news industry and also an adjunct to it” (pg.56). Badgikian's thesis is accounted for by the fact that: Few newspapers of normal size, for example, lack a web site with briefs of their most important or popular stories. In some cases, with a subscription one can receive not only Internet copies of the newspaper's entire printed story but additional information on the same subject beyond what was printed. (pg.57)

The above scenario appears relevant to the Nigerian environment, where dailies, though initially hesitant of the diffusion of the Internet innovation, have all caught the fever of online journalism. The Punch, This Day, and other papers fall into the category of Badgikian's illustration. However, the initial optimism on the commercial prospect of the Internet notwithstanding, emerging trends seem to suggest that it is not yet the elixir required to fix the 'money sickness' plaguing the newspaper industry. Television and the Internet now bring news to the audience faster with visual illustration than newspapers which are constrained by their physical form and the need to be physically manufactured and distributed. Besides, the Internet through its ever-increasing platforms of blogs, sms/news alerts, podcasts, and user-generated content (UGC) etc. has obviously outrun both radio and television in eroding the advertising income of newspapers. Added to this is the fact that the new media which the Internet symbolizes are not burdened with production and running cost challenges such as fuel, printing presses, delivery fleets, overhead etc. The Internet, like other competitors of the newspaper, as Alterman (2008) argued, are “aggregators of news, often derived from print sources, but without print media's capital intensive overhead”.

Like other business ventures, the plight of the newspaper practitioner in Nigeria is worsened by the fact of the near permanent state of infrastructure decay particularly the parlous state of electricity supply. In spite of its appellation as the largest economy in Africa (International Monetary Fund, IMF, 2016), Nigeria produces an average of 2,500 to 3,000 Megawatts of electricity compared to South Africa's 40,000 Megawatts (International energy Agency,2014). This is in spite of the fact that Nigeria's population is four times the size of South Africa's. With the Federal Government's inability to meet the projected Megawatt electricity target from 2009 till 2016 and the huge allocation for the procurement of generators for both the presidency and the National Assembly in the nation's appropriation bills year in year out, the media industry must brace up to the challenge of increased spending on alternative power supply. This will not doubt, further aggravate the already precarious state of the newspaper in the country. And the symptoms are here already. Many newspapers, like their broadcast counterparts, now owe journalists a backlog of salaries up to 8 months and more (Today.ng). Of course the Internet has no doubt widened the readership profile of many newspapers in Nigeria. For instance, Nigerians in Diaspora, and indeed the global world, now read online and are

102 Internet and the fate of the newspaper industry in Nigeria aware of local events and politics. The question is: of what commercial value has this been to the papers? While some efforts have been made by the newspapers to charge fees for stories accessed online, it is uncertain what impact such could be in the revenue profile of the industry. Global trends confirm that revenues from online editions are nowhere close to the traditional sources of circulation and advertising sales. “Newspapers”, Shafer (2006) maintains, “get only about one-tenth to one-twentieth the revenue for a web reader that they do for a print reader.”

The print media in Nigeria like their counterparts elsewhere are also not immuned to the consequence of the global trend of media fragmentation induced by the advances in information and communication technology (ICT). The incidence of 'niche journalism' or narrow casting has partitioned media audiences into smaller groups. Cable television and satellite transmission have engendered a situation in which small numbers of large media outlets attempting to serve substantial portions of the population are replaced by an abundance of smaller and more specialized organizations, often aiming only to serve specific interest groups. This development appears to have taken the wind off the sail of many newspapers as the agglomeration of newspapers has been rendered irrelevant. With this trend, as someone once noted, “Power is shifting to the individual journalist from the news outlet with more people seeking out names through search, e-mail, blogs and social media”.

Internet and the Political Economy of the Nigerian Press The Nigerian press, to some extent, shares similar experiences with those of the developed world in terms of the political economy of media productions. From its initial history as a political press, the print media have been fully integrated, albeit with local flavours, into the global trend of conglomeration and concentration. A typical Nigerian newspaper is now an extension of the growing-business empire of moguls who have diversified into several sectors, including banking, shipping, oil and gas etc. Media ownership in the country has thus become one of the instruments for oiling and strengthening the hegemony of the ruling class, including their associates to project their views as the dominant ideas and agenda of public consciousness. Examples include Orji Kalu's , Jimoh Ibrahim's National Mirror, and Daily and later Weekly Newswatch etc.

The local flavour of the political economy of the Nigerian press consists in the peculiarity of national politics. Because most media, especially the newspaper, are essentially instruments of political propaganda by their proprietors, they do not function, stricto sensu, as pure commercial or professional institutions. Where they pretend to be, there are often conflicts on how to correlate their proprietary vision/mission with those of media's commercial objectives. What this implies is that many newspapers would often sacrifice the goals of the bottom line for the sometimes commercially suicidal but politically expedient interest of publishers or sponsors. And for so long as such sponsors

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or backers remain in or close to power, the economic survival of the newspaper may be guaranteed through official/governmental and political patronage. Examples abound in the Gbenga Daniel's owned moribund Compass (Peoples Democratic Party), The Nation owned by Bola Tinubu ( with political leaning on the All Progressive Congress), and Orji Kalu's The Sun (formerly of the Progressive People's Alliance and later PDP).

Consequently, for newspapers strongly tied to the political apron strings of their publishers, the full weight of the global trends of the commercial impact of ICT may not be immediately felt as long as their patrons are in government because their sustenance and survival are matters of political expediency of their sponsors. This is illustrated by the case of Compass and the Westerner. The 'commercial viability' of these papers lasted only as long as their publisher was in power as governor in one of the states in the country. No sooner the publisher was divested of allures of political office than the two papers took unceremonious bow from the media market. Hence Internet or no Internet, all is assumed to be well until the pendulum of power shifts or is reconfigured depending on the emerging scenario. This means that predictions on global developments may, to some extent, be limited in scope with Nigeria's peculiar media environment.

Conclusion This presentation focused on the impact of advances in Information and Communication Technologies, (ICTs) especially the Internet, on the prospects of newspaper business in Nigeria. A comparative analysis was done on the situation in Nigeria and the developed world. It was discovered that although the rate of adoption of ICT innovations was initially slow in Nigeria, most Nigerian dailies, particularly those with national coverage and circulation are fast appropriating the benefits of ICTs, especially the Internet.

However, as it obtains in the developed nations, revenues from the Internet sources do not in any way match the traditional income from circulation and advertising. The thesis here is that the commercial fortune of the newspaper industry is aggressively being threatened by the combined effects of the Internet and the electronic media.Newspaper audiences are now receiving cheaper and better information on the Net. Besides, the Internet has redefined the scope of media audience from the mass public to the fragmented, atomistic or privatized one. Although the overwhelming impact of this development is not being fully felt in Nigeria due to the peculiar political economy of her media production, the fact remains, owing to palpable signs, that a number of the Nigerian press may already be

104 Internet and the fate of the newspaper industry in Nigeria commercially illiquid. The basis of their assumed health today could be anchored on their publisher's political relevance and networks.

Already, there is a controversy between the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) on some newspapers alleged to owe journalists a backlog of salary arrears running into billions of naira. Similarly NPAN has solicited the help of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON) to stem the wave of broadcast review of newspaper stories as a way of shoring up their circulation. These are indeed the real symptoms of an industry in crisis with the attendant implications on the psychology of media personnel. As it has been predicted in other climes, is Nigeria about to witness the eclipse of an industry that was hitherto robust, vibrant and instrumental to her emergence as a nation state? What is the way out?

The Way Forward It has been observed earlier in this presentation that India, in spite of her relative Internet density including China is proving to be exceptions to the plummeting fortunes of the newspaper worldwide. A recent report has it that India has the largest newspaper audience in the world. What are the lessons here for Nigeria? In the first place, India's feat has been accounted for by two factors: the relatively high literacy level and stable economy. Apart from the cheaper and flexible options of the Internet, in Nigeria most elites, and the middle class income earners, who are traditional audience of newspapers have been disempowered by the harsh economic realities such that their earnings cannot sustain the daily purchase of newspapers. Besides, the poor reading culture typified in the growing apathy of Nigerian youths to the printed word has been a subject of many intellectual gatherings. The Nigerian society is more of watching than a reading society. The age- long slogan to school children to read a book a day is a cliché that no one appears interested in.

On the professional side, there is the need for newspaper journalists to creatively engage technology such as the internet to make technological changes work for them, instead of against them. To accomplish this, papers should embark on aggressive on line marketing drives through subscriptions and micro-payments for individual stories. It is noteworthy that The Punch is already exploiting this avenue. However before online newspaper subscription can succeed, newspapers must rediscover their investigative report skills. People will pay for stories only if such stories satisfy their curiosity/information needs.

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Run-of-the-mill, stories of government activities or slated or routine assignments will hold no attraction for the global market which the Internet symbolizes. As Hirschorn (2009) posits, “the Web allows (okay, forces) journalists to concentrate on developing expertise in a narrower set of issues and interests, while helping journalists from other places and publications find new audiences”. As papers appear to be dying, replacing them with pixels may be a better option. But before this in Nigeria, newspapers may, as of first step, adopt the hybrid option. This implies part-print and part Internet. We may not be ripe for the Internet only option yet as it is already being done with some newspapers in the United States.

One obvious implication of this development, as Oso (2009) has pointed out, is that journalists now have to be competent producing materials for different formats. Citing Vincent Campbell, Oso argues that: … with news outlets being integrated into media conglomerates, journalists are being expected to demonstrate skills outside of one particular mode of journalism, be it print, audio, or television journalism. This is even more the case as online journalism can combine text audio, graphics, and video, so that clear demarcation between say, a print journalist and a broadcast journalist is rapidly being consigned to the past. When technologies are put together the capacity of individual journalists to produce news suitable for multiple formats is potentially very great, making multi-skilling even more desirable for new organizations.

The fact must be stressed that multi-skilling is the first insurance of the modern day journalists against the over bearing impact of technology and the constantly changing modes of media production. These are the issues that must be addressed if we will not rehearse the requiem of the newspaper in Nigeria. Even then, can or will the newspaper ever die?

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