NAN-H-106
Funding
By Aisha Cole
Lagos, Feb. 8, 2018 (NAN) Some media experts have advised online publishers to partner with businessmen to create new ways of funding their profession.
The experts spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on the sideline of the Annual Conference of Online Publishers Association of Nigeria (OPAN).
The Publisher of “Today’s Woman’’, Mrs Adesua Onyenekwe, said online journalists had to introduce creative ways of making profit.
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“ With time, the viewers, the readers, the followers of people, who consume that information online will begin to defer to them.
“Where for example I go to the media, I am sure what they are giving me is true because they have been authenticated or endorsed or approved by OPAN.
“So in some ways we must be our own watchdog; so that is why this whole initiative is great.
“People have to think of creative ways to make money.
“The richest man in the world today is Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos took over Washington Post, when Washington Post, everybody thought was dead.
“But recently it’s been discovered that is the most profitable publication online because it created a new service that other publications had to use.
“He found a way around them.
“May be traditional practitioners, the trainer, mass comm people may not know; we probably need people who are businessmen to come into this industry to find how we can make business out of the skills that we have.
“But the bottom line is there has to be new ways to fund the media. The media is good but there have to be new ways to fund it.“
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The Publisher of Premium Times, Mr Dapo Olorunyomi, said that the challenges facing the profession could be resolved through better training.
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“It has liberalised professionalism. It has democratised access to news and for that reason, it has the most component of the media today.
“Because its very young, it has its own difficulties and challenges.
“These challenges can be resolved through better training, cost effective regulation, peer regulation, not through some regulators from government and better thought about how to renew that whole space.
“The challenges, obviously, the first and most important is the revenue challenge; the business model they inherited, they cannot operate and survive within that system.
“I do not know how many banks will want to give equity for you to set up online media.
“Secondly, advertisers are not many doing that and its audience is not yet captured as a sponsoring agency for it. “
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The President of OPAN, Mr Austyn Ogannah, said that his executive had gone extra mile to equip some less-privileged operators with materials to boost their job.
“One of our sponsors `Aiteo` just donated 200 ipads to members of OPAN. Aiteo’s message to OPAN is this – We want to support young entrepreneurs.
“We want people that have the capacity but for some reason or the other, are unable to afford the tools to do this work.
“So there are people that want to get behind this prop. So, with the 200 ipad that have just been donated, we will look for people amongst us that are not as successful.
“That are struggling; that need support and we would pass it to them to say look this will help you do your work.
“We want to carry everybody along. Those are some of the things we want to do for young people because I have been in this business since 2008 so I have almost 10 years of experience.
“There are people that are just starting but they do not have the capacity, they do not have the money, yes is not expensive.
“Fifty thousand naira may not be a lot of money to some people but to some people, is a lot of money,“ Ogannah said.
He, however, advised prospective online publishers to build credibility and be patient before expecting income. (NAN)
AIC/AJA/IS
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Adeleye Ajayi/Ismail Abdulaziz