As at today in Nigeria, virtually all the print and digital media have the same or similar contents but the presentations vary from one medium to another. This is so because all of them are fishing in the same river.
Todays society is overburdened by choices: to read this newspaper or that newspaper; to read a newspaper or listen to radio; to read a newspaper or watch television; to read a newspaper or surf the net, etc.
Variations on information are abundant because it is easily acquired these days. There is severe competition to the readers attention. Print media are beginning to be less relevant today to their communities than yesterday.
Print will only work if it breaks stories, value-adds stories or tells what happens next. The business has always been about providing quality, relevant news and information targeted for a particular audience. Also, the more there are people receiving a steady income and expecting to continue receiving one, the more people that are to make discretionary spending purchases.
Revolution must start now; there is a need to re-invent content, re-organise newsroom, re-design formats, re-discover marketing among other things. Good journalism should be seen as a good business; it needs to ensure different content for different platform. Specifically, newspaper should have long narrative; tablet should be depth with experience, mobile should be associated with instant news while internet should be concerned about breaking news, browsing, archiving, aggregating and hyper linking. Journalists are in very strategic and good positions; they should leverage on it appropriately.
This writer is of the opinion that certain things are to be considered while developing contents either for print or online platform. Some of them are hereby enumerated below thus:
The best way to go about the content development is to begin with the most important facts. The intro to every article or news item needs to grab the readers attention instantly and summarize the story with around 25 to 30 words.
The text must be thorough but succinct. The immediate few sentences need to include who, what, where, when, why, and how bearing in mind that most people will not read more than 250 words before they start to flip. Efforts should be geared towards giving them all the information they need as quickly as possible.
Active tense must be used. It is faster and fewer words should be used. For example, Cameroon was beaten by Egypt in the last African Cup of Nation (AFCON) semi-final takes longer to read than Egypt beat Cameroon
Contents providers should communicate what is new or different. Considerations need to be given to the following questions thus: Why would the reader care about what you have to say? Why is it relevant to them? Is there a trend happening presently? What are people talking about right now, and how does this tie in with what you do?
Contents should be focused on human interest. People may be interested in the latest political developments or a new cancer treatment and if the content provider can put a human face to the story, he would have succeeded in creating an emotional connection or attachment that will draw readers in and keep them engaged. The language needs to be clear, concise, and to the point. Deep, inner desires or motives can be either constructive or destructive, depending on how consistent they are with the company’s values.
Furthermore, contents providers should imbibe the culture of keeping it real. Although journalists often joke about never letting the truth get in the way of a good story, no one should never, ever write something he knows is untrue. We all make mistakes, but a mistake is very different from a lie.
Have someone else proofread the content. It is regrettable to state here that there seems no exception to this. This can however be attributed to the absence of sub-desks just because the media managers want to reduce costs. It is disheartening seeing errors in captions and front page news items. It is a known fact that very few people can spot their own mistakes. In view of this, it is wise to do double-check before the content is published.
All of the above are known by virtually all the practitioners- contents providers; it is therefore left for them to explain why they are not making use of them as expected.
Unfortunately, some of those who are parading themselves as contents providers are not genuine journalists but pure traders and businessmen. They are PR officials to politicians and corporate organizations; they dare not write negative news items about them. Regrettably, their supervisors, in many instances, are unable to caution them because they get their own ‘returns’. They have succeeded in bastardizing the profession. Their actions and inactions are affecting the well-being of the media houses.
Corruption is more likely to flourish when those in power have less reason to fear exposure. A financially compromised press is more likely to be ethically compromised. When the media firms are financially strong, they were better and able not only to invest in long-term investigative stories but also to stand up against pressure from politicians and industries to suppress unfavourable news items. It must however be noted that as imperfect as they have been, newspapers have been the leading institutions sustaining the value of professional journalism.
It is a statement of fact that newspapers are shrinking in paginations, numbers of coloured pages, breadth of news coverage, features of various kind, etc. Contents providers should translate newspapers’ features into readers benefits as they buy end-result benefits i.e undiluted information & knowledge, pride, pleasure, etc. Media managers should be convinced that their contents create value above what the readers pay. They should go extra mile and give readers more than they expect to get. Willingness to do the necessary activities to serve readers in the highest ever imagined manner is a must.
The newspapers; online or digital therefore needed to be produced to a sufficiently high standard information, correct use of language, practicality, verifiability and factual exaggeration. The providers should spend more time on value creation that is basically an assessment of benefits against sacrifices on the ground than the monetary gains create mutually and reciprocally by business partners.
In conclusion, contents provision is a service and the fundamental basis of print and digital media business; the readers should be seen as a co-creator of value because media firms cannot deliver a value only! Media houses can only offer value propositions because value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the readers
Ayankunbi is MD/CEO at AbingMO3 Marketing Management Consultancy.
0802 305 1315
abiolaayankunbi@yahoo.com
