Making journalism work as a business

 Reviewer: Azu Ishiekwene  Journalism And Business: My Newspaper Odyssey, by Isiaq Ajibola, is a combination of a memoir and a how-to book written mostly chronologically in simple conversational prose.  The 179-page book, published by Hapicom Nigeria Limited in December, is made up of 12 chapters with a preface by the grandfather of Nigerian journalism, Mr. […]

 Reviewer: Azu Ishiekwene 

Journalism And Business: My Newspaper Odyssey, by Isiaq Ajibola, is a combination of a memoir and a how-to book written mostly chronologically in simple conversational prose. 

The 179-page book, published by Hapicom Nigeria Limited in December, is made up of 12 chapters with a preface by the grandfather of Nigerian journalism, Mr. Sam Amuka-Pemu, whose comments may have inspired the book title. 

Readers like me who are still suckers for print will find the A5-size of the book convenient to handle and the use of serif font for the text, with careful use of a few iconic photos on some pages and the clean layout, quite pleasing to look and feel. 

The author’s objective, in his own words, is to draw on his experience of about 25 years in journalism to share “the reminiscences of the team spirit that built a newspaper from scratch to strength in a short period of about 17 years in Nigeria with the hope that others will be inspired by that.”

Ajibola’s odyssey boils down to three main parts: chasing the dream; working/living the dream; and the morning after.

The first two-and-a-half chapters of the book taken with the intro show that the author was not an accidental newspaperman. On the contrary, even though he had trained as an economist at the university, his heart and soul had always been in journalism, or more correctly, in the business of journalism. 

From his first full-time job at Just Politics magazine as an advert executive in 1989 until he retired as Managing Director/COO of Media Trust two years ago, he has not looked back.  

 From chapters 3 – 9, the author shares the story of his journey as a co-founder of Trust (which started as a weekly) and also invites the reader on an odyssey that tests the genius of most entrepreneurs – how to understand your market, personal discipline, hard work and sacrifice, when to push the frontiers and damn the myths, the thrills of learning from those who have been there, the joys and mixed feelings of travel, and the serendipity of finding a good partner and a guiding hand. 

These chapters are at the heart of the book. 

Before the author co-founded Media Trust with his colleague, Malam Kabiru Yusuf, he had been employed in three media houses – Just Politics, Citizen and Sentinel. 

Two key related, even inseparable questions that the author wrestled with were: one, can media business survive and be profitable in the North; and two, can editorial and business success go hand-in-hand?

“My first stint with the media,” he writes, “was fundamental to my affinity with the print media and my understanding of the imbalance between the so-called Lagos-Ibadan press versus the northern press in Nigeria…I was well informed to see the problems that deepened the dichotomy and bias of one region against the other.”

The author argues that this “dichotomy” has both political and economic dimensions. Citing what was arguably the North’s best chance at journalism business success at the time, he quotes one of the leading lights, Malam Mohammed Haruna, as saying, “Citizen magazine made editorial success but not business success.”

This conundrum and the author’s belief that journalism and business success were not mutually exclusive, that in fact, journalism was business, remained a driving force.

So, how did he conquer his mountain? He started from the ground up, with the savings he and Kabiru managed to gather from their PR consultancy until they were both able to multiply their resources by inviting like-minded people to join them, some as investors, and others as non-financial investors but believers in the dream nonetheless.

Anyone particularly interested in start-ups – how to get funding, develop the right habits, find people and build a sustainable system – will find chapters 3 – 6 very useful. 

It is in these chapters that the author shares the how-to secrets, enlivened by anecdotes from books he had read and places he had visited, and enriched by a second degree, a Masters in Business Administration.

The author captures some of the changes that have taken place in the newspaper business in the last ten years or so in a way that will make younger journalists cry and laugh at the same time.

Ajibola notes that newspapers have grown from the days when they used to buy fleets of distribution vans and hire drivers who married new wives in every new station, while supplementing their income by using the distribution vans as kabukabus to the modern practice of outsourcing distribution and simultaneous printing.

He also notes that the use of computers and the automation of the production process, especially the pre-press, have improved the turnaround time and made the business more efficient. 

But new problems have also replaced old ones. And nowhere is this more obvious than in the contest between the business of journalism and ethics.

In Chapter Six where he discusses the synergy between editorial and business, the author says, “some Nigerian newspapers have not only punctured the wall between the two departments in order to make money, they have literally called in the bulldozer to completely take them down.

“Some have made efforts to turn editors to advertisement canvassers rather than leave them in their position as newsmen, dealing a rude shock to the journalism profession and thereby compromising the editorial integrity of their newspapers.”

Even though the author writes of how Trust exploded some business myths in Chapter 8, the last chapters of the book show that every success story brings along its own challenges as well.

Of the many challenges that journalism faces – and the author lists quite a litany in his book – it does not have to succeed as a business to invite trouble, although the greater its business success story, the more exposed to trouble it might be.

If the reader guessed that political pressure from friends and politicians would be the most rampant then you are on the same page with the author. 

But that is not all. From the author’s account, there was an instance when he found something more. According to him, during an official visit to Jigawa, a prominent Northern politician, former Governor Sule Lamido, challenged Trust’s fidelity to the defence of the “Northern interest,” one of the fundamental principles on which the newspaper was founded.

“Speaking forcefully,” the author writes, “he (Lamido) accused us of derailing from the intention of the founders of one North of Nigeria by redefining it in a narrow perspective contrary to his understanding of what the North stands for.

“According to him, the true meaning of the North as defined by Ahmadu Bello and Malam Aminu Kano to which school of thought he belongs, is a monolithic north without any ethnic or religious barriers.

“He asserted that his understanding of our own definition of the North from our editorial posturing was that of Muslims and Hausa-Fulani only and therefore not acceptable to him.”

According to the author, his spirited attempt to explain that this perception – or misperception – had nothing to do with the senior editorial staff, fell on deaf ears. 

As far as the former governor was concerned, Trust had betrayed its founding principle.

I don’t know whether or not the founders will agree with Lamido. But perhaps the same tool that the author used in the last chapter of his book – a survey – to examine the future of journalism might also be useful for Trust.

Will those who read Ajibola’s book today or a few years from now recognise in Trust the fundamental values and objectives that built it from scratch to one of Nigeria’s most respected newspapers today?

It’s a question founders, not only Media Trust founders, but most founders, fear but must always find the courage to ask.

The author looks to the future and discusses the existential threat between print and online in the last chapter. The result of a readership survey contained inside brings even greater currency to the book. 

Of course there are peculiar Trust problems in the book. Because of the depth of research and the author’s hands-on and travel experiences, however, he raises issues and provides solutions that benefitted Media Trust. In my view these nuggets are worth paying attention to as they could also benefit the newspaper industry in the country as a whole.

I will recommend the book to media owners and managers, journalists, entrepreneurs, teachers and journalism students.

This review was presented on December 14 2016 by Ishiekwene, MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine and board member of the Paris-based Global Editors Network