A renowned professor of journalism in Nigeria, Prof. Umaru A. Pate, has identified funding and the emergence of new media as parts of the challenges facing conventional media organisations globally.
He said the practice of journalism had completely changed because of the opportunities offered with the advent of the internet and the revolution in ICTs.
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The vice chancellor, Federal University of Kashere, and director representing Africa on the global network of UNESCO communication professors said this while featuring on a programme on Africa Association of African Universities (AAU) TV monitored by our reporter yesterday.
He spoke on a topic, “Enhancing Journalism Education in Africa”.
He said the numerous challenges come with the new opportunities cautioning that if the challenges were not addressed they would consume the media.
Pate said, “Advertising revenues are dangerously and drastically declining now. Sponsors are no longer as they used to be and the little revenue they could get from their governments is no longer coming – for government media organisations because of competing demands on governments.
“So the only alternative is the advert revenue and the advert revenue is now mostly controlled by the global technology companies: Amazon, Google and all of that because attention is moving to digital communication and social media platforms.
“So the conventional media with all their investments and the efforts they put into producing programs, newspapers… while these guys are working hard to produce contents and put them online; the big money eventually goes to those that didn’t produce but the distributors,’’ he added.
He said the new curriculum in Nigeria had attempted to address the challenges by introducing courses in media economics and management, and entrepreneurial journalism to teach the next generation of journalists ways of raising revenue.
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