By Dr. Isaac Massaquoi
The other day a media colleague sent me an article titled, “The Future of news and the promise of community-centered journalism”, written by Damian Radcliffe and published on the website of the International Journalists Network (IJNET). I raced through and found it an immensely interesting read. Regarding what I intend to do here, let me quote the opening paragraphs of that article.
In many parts of the world, journalism is in crisis. The industry faces challenges on multiple fronts, from an uncertain financial model, to declining levels of trust and growing news avoidance. The trajectory — unless we do things differently — is clear.
Amid this tumultuous backdrop, community-centered journalism (CCJ) offers one potential means to help address several of these existential challenges…To do this requires moving away from the traditional top-down model of newsgathering and distribution. In its place, it tasks journalists with building deep connections with communities, actively listening to them to understand their information needs, and involving them throughout the news-making process.
For as long as the Politico newspaper has existed, I have found time to look ahead into every succeeding year to see what the landscape in which we operate would look like for another 12 months. My predictions are always based on the facts on the ground at the time of writing and emerging trends in probably the most dynamic of modern fields of endeavor. I have not tried to assess how good my predictions have been with any scientific prediction.
Anyway, let’s go back to Radcliffe and see how his first sentence relates to the media industry in Sierra Leone.
“In many parts of the world, journalism is in crisis. The industry faces challenges on multiple fronts, from an uncertain financial model, to declining levels of trust and growing news avoidance. The trajectory — unless we do things differently — is clear.”
The Newspaper
The media industry in Sierra Leone industry is in deep crisis but the journalists investing in the sector and some practitioners are putting on a brave face and carrying on as usual – producing those 12 pages, with the same stories for the most part. We can talk about the quality, relevance and originality of the stories on our front pages some other time.
I am struggling to get something radically different from what obtained in the mainstream media last year to highlight as we close 2024, in other words I am not able to find anything significant. I can however report that as predicted last year, many publications were struck off the register at the Independent Media Commission because they had gone defunct. Those publications went down because business has been bad. Very bad.
If you still have a copy of last year’s final edition of Politico, look at the following lines and realize that I have basically repeated what I published at the end of 2023.
The government has continued to provide advertising revenue for many papers, but the cost of the materials needed to produce newspapers is now so prohibitive that some news organization will continue publishing on social media just to remain relevant. Newsprints and other materials are in the hands of a few foreign traders that have formed a cartel, making the situation totally unbearable, in fact they are choking life out of print journalism in Sierra Leone.
Newspaper readership has fallen year on year and even without accurate statistics it is easy to reach this conclusion based on what production officers bring to the post office daily. Things can only be even more difficult in 2025 owing to a combination of factors, like advertisers now increasingly using sophisticated methods to easily reach the people through social media applications. The only adverts now left for newspapers are those that MDAs are statutorily required to publish in newspapers for job vacancies and other procurement matters.
The other challenge facing the media industry is the inability of almost all newspapers to circulate deep inside the country and the suffocating delay by advertisers, including government ministries, departments and agencies to pay for services. When the biggest advertisers behave in this way, they can be easily accused of weaponizing advertising to the disadvantage of our industry. Many newspapers have had cause to write off hundreds of thousands of Leones owed them by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
These agents are reported to be collecting half of the cost of adverts they place in some newspapers. There are no set criteria by which newspapers are selected for such business – it’s not about the quality of their journalism, circulation figures, political leaning, or even compliance with IMC regulations. The advertising agents make the decision in most cases to get a significant share of the advertising revenue over and above what the MDAs pay them for their services. Sadly, official Public Relations personnel have started behaving in the same way. This can only intensify in 2025.
THE COMMUNITY RADIO SECTOR
The government has not exactly played down the importance of this sector in delivering their programs across the country but it’s fair to say that the sector has not been brought into the position where it ought to be. For example, a major pillar in the BIG FIVE agenda is the FEED SALONE project aimed at significantly cutting back on the unbelievably huge amount of money spent yearly to import rice.
That’s not a bad initiative but those executing it should never underestimate the effective role community radio stations can play to make it a success. Those radio stations operate in their communities; they know their people and the people trust them. What other variables do the ministry of agriculture need to see to harness the huge possibilities the community radio sector provides to engage them in a constructive way?
It’s all good to put on wellington boots and drive a tractor on a farm for the benefit of social media but how about returning to the same farm the next day to find the real farmers on the ground in impenetrable darkness about the point the minister was making last night on WhatsApp? This one-size-fits-all approach to engaging today’s increasingly diverse media audiences is an extremely serious challenge this government must quickly learn to deal with.
INDEPENDENT CONTENT PRODUCERS
Again, I must repeat what I said in the last two editions of this column. At the end of 2023 I mentioned the crucial role that Independent Content Producers can play in enriching programming on the media landscape, especially at the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation, SLBC. As I say this, I have my eyes on the bulk of the money expected to flow through the Independent Fund for Public Interest Media.
The details can be worked out, but the quality of the programs broadcast on SLBC will be so much better if the station restricted itself to producing only their news and current affairs sequences and local language programming. Sports, light entertainment, features and documentary series dealing with our history and culture and other popular genres can be left in the hands of private producers. Current SLBC producers that should have retired years ago but have continued to use all the tricks in the books to remain in office could now retire and set up production houses and bid for those contracts in the open market.
There are several other funding possibilities that can be explored for or by this growing sector with thousands of jobs to be created. All that is required to agree to move from the old and sterile ways of doing things and do a little innovative thinking and organization.
CONCLUSION
Let me now use the second paragraph of that material from Radcliffe to conclude this piece. He thinks that to address the crisis in journalism, something must change in the way the media relates with that complex phenomenon we call audiences.
Amid this tumultuous backdrop, community-centered journalism (CCJ) offers one potential means to help address several of these existential challenges…To do this requires moving away from the traditional top-down model of newsgathering and distribution. In its place, it tasks journalists with building deep connections with communities, actively listening to them to understand their information needs, and involving them throughout the news-making process.
There is nothing particularly radical about this suggestion. It’s purely based on the realization that our industry has changed, it is changing extremely fast, and we should do something about that. In Sierra Leone, we should redefine our journalism, taking all the realities facing us into consideration. I am talking about audience preferences, commercial pressures, ruthless political manipulation and so on.
Journalists are dozing off in front of their computers as politicians now brazenly avoid scrutiny by writing their own stories on social media which their hired hands then bombard all social media platforms with.
These days when we buy papers in the morning, we are almost sure to read the same items published verbatim by some minister on social media several hours earlier.
I thought journalists were taught to challenge official accounts on behalf of the people because they were told to “never believe anything until it is officially denied.” Anyway, we will talk a lot about our own relevance throughout 2025.
I wish all journalists and media workers the very best.
© Copyright (2024) Politico (23/12/24)
