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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 the nation'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: 95 Babcock Journal Of Mass Communication 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 Daily Times, Sketch, Third Eye, Mirror, The Republic, The entire Concord stable, Newswatch, Next, 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 97 Babcock Journal Of Mass Communication 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.

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