By March when the Nigerian government locked everyone and everything down, our newsroom had been locked 4 weeks prior. News was shot down.
Locked in for all the reasons news shouldn’t be held down. News coverage and dissemination suffered greatly at a time when everyone was turning to news outlets for updates, information, background knowledge, steps to prevent virus infection and more.
The entire news system suffered. Make no mistakes about this, as often as we all say we are passionate about our jobs, no one will underestimate the power of money in daily operations and the lives of the people who make news matter.
It kept my mind churning often about sustainable funding systems for our kind of journalism.
At News Central, our kind of journalism is the kind that looks to tell Africa’s stories from the African perspective to the entire world.
It is World News Day today and I’ll tell you briefly why news matters to us at News Central.
If television’s promise was to give us all a window to the world, News Central gives you a window on Africa.
Journalist or yes, we all have a keen realization that the many cases of hidden in plain sight truths about the African continent, the blunted counter-attacks from local media when Kenya was adjudged a terror-hotbed by CNN, and conveniently glossed over retreats each time the BBC made a convenient error in description of Africans have not worked.
Serving as a credible source of information in business, politics, the environment, sports, entertainment and much more, News Central news isn’t news that helps you pass time as a viewer, it is news that helps you decide how to spend your time.
Our news matters because we are able to initiate news stories from trends on social media, from an idea or from knowing some piece of information which is worth spending some time and resources to cover.
Our news is generative because we reframe the challenges based on new insights gained.
News is so important to us at News Central that it makes up 70% of our content. We have a strong determination to transform lackluster news delivery into a formidable one; to challenge news reportage because news is not about who breaks news first but about who takes the risks to present balanced, well researched reports, steadiness under immense breaking news pressure. This has remained our biggest asset.
By summarizing the big facts of a story in a concise way, the most important take away for the viewer has become our objective.
#WorldNewsDay #JournalismMatters