The Herald: A once-vigorous newspaper now badly crippled

Those years in the old Kwara State (which consisted of the Kwara of today and what is now Kogi Central and Kogi West senatorial districts), The Herald was for the locals a generic name for newspapers as every newspaper or anything that looked like it was called Herald; but the story has changed and The Herald today is a newspaper living on its past and struggling for its future.

The dream of the founding fathers of The Herald is threatened with the deteriorating state of the newspaper that hitherto commanded wide audience of faithful readers. To say that the medium is becoming a relic of its past is to say the obvious.
The paper is owned by the Kwara State Government and was in its heyday the most sought after newspaper at newsstands especially all over the old Kwara State.
Readers of the more than 40-year-old newspaper who spoke to our correspondent lamented the poor outlook of the publication. Sources close to the newspaper house said ‘undue interference of the state government’ has continued to threaten the existence of the newspaper.
The sources alleged politicization of the newspaper which they said has removed its credibility with members of the public. “In a situation where a newspaper is perceived not to be conscious of public protection and not accountable to the people, there is a suggestion of compromise,” one of the sources said.
Despite the obvious challenges in The Herald however, the newspaper is still blessed with capable members of the pen fraternity who have continued to show their professionalism in the few pages of the paper still being published.
And the management still manages to get copies of the newspaper beyond its home state. The newspaper has correspondents in Kaduna, Kano, Kogi and Abuja; and although all the circulation vans are grounded, the management still makes sure they extend the paper to some states outside Kwara. Only the problem of government’s failure to offer lifeline support to the paper cripples its circulation capacity.
Due to problems with circulation, the paper which was a daily publication was at a point produced once a week. Conditions appear to have improved in recent years when it became bi-weekly and now four times a week: on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday; but our correspondent learnt that the government, citing current financial quagmire, plans to prune the frequency of publication to once a week.
The newspaper which is now between twenty four and thirty two pages publishes 500 copies of each edition, with vendors complaining of low patronage from members of the public.
Infrastructural decay at the publishing house, according to a source at the company, is a story for another day. The place currently looks as if some people are bent on completely obscuring the glory of the newspaper.
 Daily Trust Sunday gathered that the relocation of the newspaper from its former office has dealt it a particularly debilitating blow. “The newspaper has continued to suffer since its relocation from the befitting office constructed for it by the Late Muhammed Lawal, the former governor of the state, which is now being occupied by a separate establishment, the Harmony Diagnosis Centre.
“The newspaper is highly deprived of space as it struggles to operate where it shares office with Kwara State Waste Management Company (KWEPA), Kwara State Publishing and Printing Corporation, the state printing press, and a section of the office of the state head of service,” an observer told our correspondent. 
The permanent site of the newspaper house which was along New Yidi Road, Ilorin, was considered the perfect office complex until the immediate past administration of Bukola Saraki descended on it, bulldozed the once revered edifice, and built the Diagnostic Centre there.
After the place was bulldozed, The Herald was relocated to its present place, which has now put the publishing house in a bad way. The building is an eyesore and investigation revealed that the government was showing a lackadaisical attitude to it until recently when Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed paid an unscheduled visit and was visibly touched by its dilapidated condition.
Apart from the buildings, the machines which were installed several decades ago have long become obsolete.
A visit to the place gives one the first hand information that the place has suffered decades of neglect from successive administrations. Leaving the permanent site to where it is now has been for the staff like leaving a well furnished apartment to a bare hut.
The general opinion is that the newspaper’s glory can be redeemed if adequate fund is made available; because, as it is now, the paper retains a large number of professional journalists who are doing their job diligently.
With dedication and zeal to practice their profession, the workers of the newspaper believe that the paper can bounce back if government begins to fund it sufficiently. Conversely, the workers are not being paid regularly. For four months running, the state government has not paid the subvention due to the newspaper. The explanation has been that the state is facing financial crisis.
Recently, a staff of the newspaper was said to have collapsed after not eating for many days allegedly as a result of the unpaid salary and was rushed to a nearby hospital.
In addition to the problem with salary, the working environment is not helpful, due again to poor funding which manifests in non-payment of allowances to reporters in spite of loud complaints against such reality.
Identifying poor funding and weak political will as the problem with The Herald, lovers of the newspaper say that correcting the twin challenges is all that is necessary to return the newspaper to its past glory.
They express the disappointment that the state government is not taking tangible steps towards this direction to end the sorry state of the newspaper. What is being spoken of is a ‘development plan’ that is little known to anybody beyond the few with such a plan.
“There is a development plan for the publishing house; the state government is already making plan on how to revive the newspaper but we don’t want to make it public yet because it involves a huge financial commitment and with dwindling federal allocation to the state, the government would not want to raise people’s hope on the newspaper and fail them,” a source close to the government who demanded anonymity, said.
 An opinion held by many observers is that political partisanship has long added to the woes of The Herald. The media house, according to such opinion holders, would have done itself a world of good by accommodating opposition views and representing the interest of Kwarans of all political leanings, rather than reporting the ruling party and government in such a way, they contend, that deprive opposition politicians the services of the state-run newspaper.
In the same vein, opposition voices allege that the recruitment into the paper which was based on merit in the beginning and gave equal opportunity to people from different parts of the country ‘has now been politicised’. This, our correspondent gathered, has affected editorial content which has now changed from shaping the opinion of the local people by reflecting government policies, to patronage based on specific callings; thus removing the sense of balance that the newspaper was once known for.
Consequently, especially with the coming of Peoples’ News and National Pilot newspapers, the readership of The Herald fell and its capability to attract advertisement revenue deeply affected.
With regards to staff welfare, Daily Trust on Sunday learnt that the government has already begun offsetting the backlog of salaries, with about two months still outstanding.
Numerous efforts to get authorized comments from officials of both the newspaper and government hit dead ends as none of them would utter a word, apparently to save their respective jobs; but some members of the public who appeared sympathetic to the authorities argued that, like the government and every sector of the economy and especially ‘at these trying times’, money is never enough to do certain things. They asserted that the situation at The Herald should not be isolated for castigation.