Publisher of Daily Times titles, Fidelis Anosike, in this engaging chat with Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, speaks on the media organisation at 90 years of existence, secret of media survival and his verdict on President Muhammadu Buhari’s performance, among other issues.
Daily Times is 90 years. What are the things lined up for its celebration?
We don’t see Daily Times at 90 as a time of heavy celebration, but a time of reflection. That’s why we have been going to all the media organisations to align what Daily Times used to be to what it is today.
We have series of events we are trying to finalise with the old legacy association. Once that is done, we can then make it public.
But one of the major things we want to do is an essay writing competition for young people. We also want to use the occasion of ‘Daily Times at 90’ to begin the process of revival of Times Journalism Institute (TJI).
You plan to align what Daily Times used to be to what it is. Why did we lose the glorious years?
I can’t answer that question because it is just like asking the President of Nigeria why the country is where it is. It is a combination of everything. You are a Nigerian. You are in the media, so you know. You should be able to answer that question.
I may know. But what about the public?
I think the public knows. Daily Times was not just a newspaper. It was the anchor media company for the country. It was started in 1926. From that time to the present, the level has gone under the bridge. Just like every legacy brand, you can’t take out Daily Times from Nigeria. The same way Nigeria is suffering and having challenges in development is the same way Daily Times has challenges of development over the years because of its influence.
It got to a point that it was so influential that the government had to take it over. Daily Times was not founded by government; it was founded by private individuals, but government took it over because of the pervasive influence on the affairs of the nation which cuts across media, finance, banking, even politics etc. So the military government at that time felt that for them to hold onto power, they had to take control of it.
And you know at that time there was no press freedom; that started the decline. It got to a time the government privatised it and said they don’t want to have a hand in business; not just Daily Times but every other business or endeavour that government once held. They felt that it was high time in the spate of development that the country divested. So when we are talking about bringing it back, we are saying not just bringing it back as number one but also making sure that it continues to play the role that it should play in national development.
Are you worried that new media establishments are not even breaking even, let alone making profit?
Why should I be worried? When people don’t break even, it does not mean we can’t break even. Businesses are different. We have different experiences, resources and know-how. The people that are failing in business are those who don’t understand the business they are going into.
With the way the new media (online) are taking the market share, are you not afraid they will encroach on print?
We are in business in media. Media is media. They are all one. Online and print are all distribution platforms. The content remains the same, but dimension is to meet the audience.
People don’t understand what they are going into, that is why they fail. If you understand what you are going into, then you will find the right resources in terms of people, money, capacity, relationships and then you succeed. That’s the way life goes.
In the Nigerian environment, many people are still interested in the print media but many are failing…?
(Cuts in) That is what I am trying to say. If you know what you are doing, there is no reason for you to be afraid to fail because there is something called context. Every business has a context. You have to situate it to a context. And the context of Nigeria is what you are talking about. But print is a very small part of media. It can be influential, but is a very small part of media.
So if you are trying to make money out of media and trying to make impact on national development, you can’t just be in the print because print is very limited. We have over 49 per cent of Nigerians under the age of 54 and they are all online. But you have over 100 million smartphones in Nigeria.
So people are consuming news (and the media) on the go. That is a very impactful platform that you should think about if you are a media company.
Critics have accused Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), which you belong to, of not really discussing media issues like bailout when they meet relevant authorities like the President, governors, etc.
They (critics) are not members of NPAN; so they cannot accuse NPAN of anything. But the critical point is, what does media need? Is it bailout?
Media do not need any bailout, as far as I am concerned. What media need is proper alignment with national development goals of the country. Media are not banking, but the fourth estate of the realm, according to constitution. It is supposed to be a balance of power. So if you are a balance of power, why do you have to go to the executive for bailout? You will lose your voice. You are supposed to be there to defend the ideals of the constitution and the common man. Why then do you have to create a structure where you will benefit from people you are supposed to be checking?
So, I don’t think people understand what it means to be a publisher. If you must be a publisher, (you should know) it’s not something you go into to make profit. But you have to break even as a business. But if you want profit, there are other more valuable businesses you can put your money into and then get the returns.
But then bailout is not something I think one should be pushing for, for the media industry. What I think is, proper alignment to what the government is trying to do; cooperation with government agencies, especially security agencies, to be more responsive in the job.
Media need capacity building and investments, not bailout. The media have to position themselves to attract the right investment, so that people can be trained and be competitive because when you look at the online media, most of the people there are well read and these are young individuals who are Master’s Degree holders and Ph.D holders and are using their time and knowledge to attract followers.
So, the print media and cohorts have not developed over the years because they became complacent and they think they have all the power.
Change is constant. You have to evolve, if you don’t, you die. Nobody should accuse NPAN, especially non-members, of not asking for bailout. Government doesn’t have money. Government itself needs bailout. I think NPAN is doing well and doing what it needs to do.
A lot of newspapers have gone under; doesn’t that mean that the print media have failed?
That does not mean that they have failed. If you start a business without the right fundamentals, you will shut down. How many media companies have opened in the past 10 years and closed down in the last 10 years? You can count it on one side of your fingers. But how many financial institutions do you know that have opened and closed down? How many transport companies have opened and closed down? It is something that is pervasive. The phenomenon pervades the economy; it has nothing to do with one aspect of the business. Maybe people run into it and think it’s a simple business to do; they get there unprepared.
Media business takes time to build a brand. It takes a lot of resources, relationships and alignments. That is why in any other clime, it is not everybody that becomes a publisher. You don’t just jump in and become a publisher by putting out papers on the streets; you have to think about distribution, journalists, branding etc. You need a lot of time for people to begin to invest in you. The money from medium-customer advertising. People need to have a need to use your medium to talk to people. People need to have a need to buy your paper to better their lives. If you don’t provide the solution to that need, you will not get monetisation for it. It is not like before when everybody gets advert just for doing nothing. Everywhere in the world, economies are changing, there is depression and recession all round the world. What recession means is that there is also opportunity in crisis. During such crisis, the people that are well tuned to that aspect of business survive.
You don’t think the online media, especially the social media, have also affected the performance of print media?
No, they have not. They are complementary. Just like when radio was invented, people said newspapers were going to die. Newspapers are not going anywhere. Social media are a distribution platform. They distribute news and contents. Now you have to define what kind of news the man at the other end needs. If you provide it, he will still be on your platform. There’s nothing stopping print media from dominating social platform. In New York, New York Times is the king. Those are traditional media houses. They dominate those platforms because they have the contents. They are the people that have the boots on the ground already. So you have advantage.
When you look at the social media, the print media are the ones more positioned to be in control of it if they want to, because they have the money. They have clear product lines. One (page of) newspaper advert is about N500,000. It’s a clear product which online doesn’t have.
But the online media get adverts too.
Yes, they do; but the advert is a bit complex which you know Google and others are in control of.
The advertising spend leaving the print media is not going to online, but billboards. And billboards don’t have any content. So there is no product as of today that is like the newspaper because you have the news, features, photographs etc. And then it is something that the people are already used to when it comes to cover price of newspapers. Even when they don’t buy, somebody else wants to use it as a platform to advertise.
The point is that we have to be more responsive. We have to find what our customers (the people that are reading and those using us as a medium) want. It’s a traditional business like the man who manufactures bread. You can’t take away bread from people’s diet because they are used to it. We have comparative advantage.
Some people say media is not as elevated as it used to be; they claim it is now more sensational and lacking interpretative journalism.
That is what I’m trying to say. If you do the right thing, the consumers will reward you for it and be loyal to you. If you do sensationalism, it’s not a comparetive advantage because so many other people can do it. It’s something everybody can do; you don’t need to be trained to be a sensational journalist, but you need to be trained to be a proper journalist. That’s the comparative advantage media houses have – people that have been trained over the years. They went to journalism schools, vocational schools in training, seminars etc. There is no way you can compare that with people that are not trained in the same field. It is like bankers; you can do wonder banking, but is it going to be as effective as people that have knowledge in banking?
In every service business, experience and knowledge count. So journalists in the print and social media are the same. Most of the people you see dominating social media took their root from traditional journalism.
We have to see social media and the online version as distribution platforms which have just evolved.
What about the influx of non-professionals?
It doesn’t matter. What makes you a professional? Like doctors, the strongest medical platform today is online. You don’t have to be a medical doctor. If something is wrong with me today, I can Google it and get my solution. The world is now a solution-based world, no more an elitist-based world.
The consumers have the power, and it is not like before. So the world has changed. Technology has changed the world. I mustn’t go to the doctors for him to use a stethoscope on me; I can easily Google it. But at the back of that are medical doctors. The underlining platform for that technology solution is medical doctors. In-between the chats and discussions, the medical doctors also provide the guide. The same thing should be happening in print media, even in the legal field. People get legal advice without necessarily going to lawyers. But then when you want to go to court, you need lawyers to argue your case. That is why if the President wants to make a decision tomorrow, he is not going to rely on social media; but he will look at the print media because these are the people that they know with the source of the news. News is not opinion, but fact. So, the same way, you have traditional media companies being the ones that influence policy and decisions of government not social media; but social media will contribute because when decisions are made, they are made pervasive, you communicate it and push it.
If you write something, for example, in good print media, the President is going to take it serious; but if he sees something on a blog that he doesn’t know, it won’t influence the way he makes his decision. Everything has anchor. Any ship without anchor is floating. Most of the social media sites don’t have anchor, but all print media do.
What is your view on the current Nigerian situation?
Nigeria is on the right path. I don’t want to say I’m convinced – I know we are on the right part. The path that the current government is taking is the right path. And I say that without fear of contradiction.
If you study ‘Reaganomics’, it got to a point where Americans were not saving. They needed someone to inspire them to begin to save and that’s how they came out of recession.
There is nobody among us that doubts that the President we have today is not corrupt. You cannot find anybody in Nigeria that would say President Buhari is corrupt. They can say people around him are corrupt, but for once we are in agreement that the person who is the standard-bearer for Nigeria is not corrupt.
What it means is that President Buhari can inspire Nigerians to be themselves because it is human beings that create wealth. It got to a point where people say the country is not working, but they are not doing anything. They just sit down somewhere and say all sorts of things. It’s because of lack of inspiration, because they have tried to do it in the past and the people they called leaders failed to inspire them.
You can see it manifesting. Can you remember how many governments have tried to deregulate the petroleum industry, which is the main platform for corruption in Nigeria? We don’t know how many barrels of petrol we consume. We don’t know how many we import.
When this President was military head of state (1984/85), over 3,200 kilometres of pipeline to take fuel everywhere was built. Today we have to hire over 1,500 trucks to move petroleum products. Just think about it. You know what one truck is and then you have to hire 1,500. If you put it from here (Lagos), it will get to Ibadan. So think about that operation.
There are too many moving parts; hence too much corruption in the country because very few people have made it that way for them to benefit. Just like war, people create war to benefit. A lot of things will be disjointed.
When you want to make a change, even in your own life, it’s still going to be difficult.
Even before the (Buhari) government, could we say Nigeria was fine? The fact that naira was N150 (to a dollar) did not show the real value of naira. What were we producing? We were importing everything. Everybody wanted to send their kids abroad. After studying abroad, they come back to Nigeria to work in this same disjointed environment. Isn’t it a waste of money? If anybody is sick, he goes abroad; does it mean that those hospitals cannot be built here?
So unless you take those corrective measures, which I think that the President is not only resilient but also focused on taking, we will still be walking in circles.
There’s going to be bad eggs in every situation. Every turnaround you want to make, just like the one we are trying to do in Daily Times, is going to be difficult. People are going to call you names. But if you stay true to the course, at the end of the day, you’ll be congratulated.
I believe and know that Nigeria is on the right path. There’s going to be some mistakes when you are trying to correct any situation, but ultimately we want a better country not for us but for our children.
