Newsstar’s Exit: Any Hope for Fringe Media Players?

In the last two years, any keen observer of events unfolding at the Ikeja GRA office of this one -time vibrant tabloid would perceive that all was not well with the staff and management of Newsstar newspapers.

After weathering the storm for about six years, cracks began to emerge on the walls of Newsstar with a high turnover of editors, and arrears of outstanding salaries accumulating up to six or seven months. The last straw was when Management of the newspaper gave each staff about N5, 000 just before Christmas with the promise to “do something” early in January. When it was learnt that some workers were holding clandestine meetings on how to “appropriately respond” to the situation, the company promptly declared a compulsory break for two weeks. Just as the two weeks break was coming to an end early January, another circular promptly emerged announcing a three months closure to enable the paper “ reposition, reinvigorate and bounce back to relevance  in the media Industry”.

However most observers feel the statement is just a form of euphemism to ensure that the paper’s exit does not put too much stains and ripples to personality and dignity of its promoters. In fact a reporter with the paper who feels his only link now to the company is how to get his six months arrears of salary as promised by the paper’s management retorted, “This is an old style, exactly what “New Age” and “The Comet” claimed when they were folding up. Till date those titles are gone for goods. We are not kids; I can bet with all my outstanding pay that this is the end of Newsstar”

 If one could take a flashback to just the last three years, one would easily note that this line of experience is not limited to Newsstar, especially amongst middle Level or fringe players in the newspaper market. Observers of the current Shaky steps of brands like Compass and Daily Independent newspapers might forget that a few years ago, these brands entered the stage with great fanfare like trained wrestlers poised to take over a title belt from a reigning Champion.

About eight years ago when Daily Independent, entered the ever competitive Nigerian newspaper market, it promised to comprehensively change the face of print journalism in the country Today, some years after a heavily funded publicity campaign was deployed to herald the publication into the market, the realities of a harsh operating environment, exacerbated by the conservative nature of the Nigerian newspaper Market   has taught  the management of this once very flamboyant media firm some bitter lessons in newspaper management.

Those Challenges reached their crescendo when staff protested the non-payment of four months’ salary arrears and the sack of about 21 members of staff. In fact Daily Independent workers embarked on a strike action that lasted two days.

If one can link the problems of Newsstar and Daily Independence to their ownership being non media professionals, what of the experience of NEXT newspaper, a publication run by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist? The paper stopped publication just after 2½ years of in-depth and sometimes controversial coverage of Nigeria’s business and political landscape. Publisher Dele Olojede, a former foreign editor for New York's Newsday, said NEXT was "losing a lot of money" and decided to stop its print edition to re-evaluate its finances.
"In this environment, where the government still occupies a disproportional and distortionately large role in the economy, it has a ripple effect — said or unsaid," Olojede told The Associated Press. "The result is we've had a very tough time getting business."
He added: "We have to rethink our strategy and see how we can outsmart the system that seems so stuck against us."
NEXT began publishing its print edition in January 2009, focusing on government corruption in Nigeria, Its columnists, editorials and reporting set it apart from other Nigerian newspapers, where journalists are often accused of accepting cash payments from interview subjects or "brown envelope" bribes slipped into briefing materials at news conferences.
Olojede, who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2005 while at Newsday, said he hoped NEXT at least would continue to publish stories on its website.
It is worthy of note that the current crisis among middle level media brands is not peculiar to general interest publications like Newsstar, NEXT or Daily Independent.  A business newspaper house at Alausa- Lagos, Financial Standard, had a few years ago,  accumulated over seven months’ salary arrears, moved from a daily Business paper to a weekly publication  before going into total extinction.

 As if all the above are not alarming enough, it is reported that less than five percent of fringe and middle level newspapers houses are up to date in terms of prompt settlement of staff remuneration.

The question is, why are new and smaller media houses experiencing so many crises?

Isaac Umunna, a Senior Management staff with a leading International magazine, Africa Today feels the whole thing borders on inadequate planning, poor management and lack on quality research. Commenting on this issue online, he questioned, “Are other papers such as PUNCH, Guardian and Vanguard not professionally run and doing well? Most publishers fail to do their homework well. For a serious paper to publish and not to have enough funds to run for 5 years before starting is ridiculous when it took THE GUARDIAN about that number of years to break even. Besides, a publication like NEXT came publishing what he believed Nigerians should read instead of finding out what they wanted to read. And he neglected marketing! So how could he make it? In any case, how come he blew some $20m (about N3b) in just over two years?  For any publisher or editor to be dishing out what he or she thinks people should read instead of researching to find out what they want to read smacks off costly arrogance because he or she is not the one to buy or advertise in the paper”

But Ladi Oke, a Business Management expert feels it is not peculiar to the media industry. In his words, “In any sector-  banks, insurance, advertising or even hotels, when there are challenges like recession, fringe players suffer most because choices are limited by scarce resources, for instance, just three or four banks control over 75% of the banking industry;  others must bring in a lot of creativity and uniqueness to survive. So in the media, any small or medium level player cannot hope to compete frontally with Guardian, Punch or Thisday and excel. If it does not create her market to dominate, it will go down; it might just be a matter of time.” 

Clem Baiye Chairman of the Editorial Board of the defunct  NewAge newspaper, a quality daily newspaper and Chief Executive of Verity Communications Limited feels the greatest harm is when business interests and reportorial instincts collide. Commenting online on the fate of NEXT he x-rayed issues like the papers take-no-prisoners approach to investigating stories.” Stories on NNPC and other public behemoths were pursued at the risk of advertising revenue. Secondly, I gather the stable had a non-compromising attitude to settling issues with organizations being reported on. I can only imagine that somewhere, somehow, proprietarily interests collided against reportorial instincts. Assuming the latter always won, it was only a matter of time before the business enterprise started losing”.

Wrong business strategy rather  the quality of its stories or a failure by Nigerians to appreciate it's type of journalism are the major undoing of failed media brands according to Anthony Osae-Brown, a business analyst and Columnist with Businessday newspaper. In his words, “a paper like NEXT was a niche paper that tried to become a mass paper and that was wrong. They had the weekend Market. They had a strong online presence. I think they had no business going daily in a print edition. Going daily diluted their weekend strength, stretched their financial resources and that was their undoing eventually”.

Paul Ubuane, a one-time publisher of a specialized tourism journal feels the situation of the media in Nigeria is a bit peculiar. According to him, “the average Nigerian elite and advertiser is docile and flows with the bandwagon. That is why they have allowed the big publications like Punch, ThisDay, Guardian, Vanguard, Tell and Businessday to cannibalize the market forever. They don’t read, there is no research on content and value, they just sit yearly and allocate ads to ageless media brands. You can publish your heart out from your corner; nobody will sit to evaluate your work. Maybe if you have money like Tinubu to flood your stuff in their eyes like he did with The Nation, they will begin to consider you. That is why we will never have a publication that circulates up to even half a million copies in a country of 165 million people. We have a mafia-controlled media market. It’s a shame”

 Supersports Nigerian Editor, Emeka Enyadike seems to tilt a bit towards Ubuane’s opinion, “The problem with Newspaper and Magazine failure in Nigeria is the tendency to want to go it alone structure or the lack of it and the failed system. Publishing is an expensive venture and those who survive are those backed by large media corporations with multiple publications and the ability to share costs of printing, distribution, advert sales and other operational costs. Nigerian Publishers need to also learn to attract investors and run them as businesses no matter their political or ethical leaning
Passion, awards and even availability of funds are not enough guarantees. It is after all a business
Distribution is the biggest handicap but most of all, the industry is still stuck in the past and this includes the mindset of journalists and key actors .This calls for deep reflections of the state of the industry”

Dapo Olorunyomi ex- Enterprise Editor, NEXT Newspaper anchors his solution on innovativeness and proper managerial acumen of media leaders. X-raying further he said “With about 80million registered phone lines in the country, according to the various networks, and with about 43million Nigerians online, wise news providers are turning to the web and to mobile devices for the rescue.
In the absence of a viable market mechanism to pay for content, and in the absence of a transparent state subsidy to support the industry [like the VAT exemption for media industry in the U.K] the solution to the revenue problem will depend on the innovative pathways that people like Nduka Obiagbena, publisher at ThisDay, is improvising, by resorting to conferencing, fashion and style, and other popular culture outlets to cushion the bottom line.

 Journalism is notorious for creating newsroom leaders without consciously preparing them for such roles. Today’s newsroom leaders are mostly people who become editors only because they write or edit well or worse of all, because they are favoured as loyal to the upper deck! Truth is that leadership requires training and retraining therefore I will suggest that management and leadership training become a major consideration for newsroom leaders. Nothing stops newsmen, like any other person, from acquiring business technocracy”.

 The publisher of Ovation Magazine and presidential candidate in the 2010 elections, Dele Momodu seems to agree with Olorunyimi. In Momodu’s opinion “The first problem of publishing is always the assumption that brilliant journalists can start a publication and run it by themselves. The second is to over-concentrate our efforts at getting good stories and downplaying the business side of things, inadvertently forgetting that revenue is the soul of every business. The simple truth is that NEXT, just like some other dead or dying papers was not generating enough income: it was in a hurry to grow when it should have made itself the most influential Sunday paper, and a major force on-line. That is my candid view.  Another issue is quality research”.

“The advertiser is interested in what people are reading not how poetic your prose is. My advice is that our newspapers should get to know their readers; they must reduce the glaring corruption in our industry; they should build some respect and respectability for our journalists; reduce their overheads and treat media as a business and not as charity or a revolutionary vanguard. Journalists must also bond better. A situation where I contested the Presidential election and my own colleagues disqualified me from their pages is sad and unfortunate. Soldiers, police officers, customs officers are all qualified but not a publisher who has laboured to build a global brand from 20,000 pounds. If you disrespect ourselves, others will disrespect all of us”.

Most analysts equally agree that the media industry is going through hard times resulting from reduction in the volume of adverts and cuts in marketing communication budgets by local and multinational firms. In as much as the publishing during recession could be pretty challenging, it could also be a potential money spinner. Many have come but could not withstand the harsh economic environment militating against the business operation in Nigeria. However, even in our over communicated society, for a media brand to be successful and relevant in the marketplace, it still needs to communicate distinctly to acquire the mindshare even before the market share, which is the primary objective of any business. This, combined with consistency, will bring success in the short or long run.