My expectations for Trust in years ahead — Ishiekwene

Azubuike Ishiekwene is the publisher of The Interview magazine and before then served as an executive director of Punch Nigeria. In this interview, he speaks on his take on from inception, the next challenge(s) for the paper and expectations for the pape

Dclocked 16 years on January 15 this year, what is your take on the newspaper from inception till date?

aily Trust

First, let me congratulate the Board, the management and the staff of Daily Trust and all the other titles of Media Trust Limited. I believe in the past 16 years, it has grown like the famous oak tree. It has grown like a mustard seed and grown to be quite an institution. Starting first as a weekly to a daily and then the launch of its other titles and making its presence online which is also an extension of any newspaper or media brand today.

I will say if you look at where Trust titles are coming from, they are in a way a succession of number of efforts in the past in the North to start newspaper which didn’t quite succeed as businesses. There is no doubt at all that Daily Trust is doing well. Before the coming of Trust, there have been a lot of efforts like Citizens Magazine, Sentinel and quite a number of others; very brilliant journalists in the North to start with. These were by and large editorial success; certainly they were not business successes.

So for Trust to have remained there for the past 16 years, as professionally as it has been run over the years, I salute the tenacity of the managers.

What in your opinion has the paper been doing right over the years to sustain these editorial and business successes?

I will say there are certain basic principles that will help not just editorial but also business success which I have observed to a large extent with Trust. One clearly is to have a strong ethical backbone. That’s important for long term success because if you are not an ethically strong brand, then you can’t go very far. I have seen a lot of that (strong ethical backbone) in Trust.

Another success factor has also been strong management – circulation and interplay in a very judicious way of both editorial and the business line – those sides have managed to do very well. And I think it has to do a lot with the efforts of the founders. I’m talking about Malam Kabiru Yusuf and his good friend Alhaji Isiaq Ajibola. Isiaq Ajibola came from a marketing/business background and Kabir Yusuf came from a background of journalism. So, I see that clearly the meeting of these great minds and the ability and effort of either party to maintain a strong balance. Of course there are plenty of supports of awesome people who joined them afterwards, but these were the founders. I believe that their efforts to maintain a strong editorial and business balance and for two sides to exist side by side with a strong ethical backbone have contributed largely to the success of the brand.

The newspaper won the Nigeria Media Merit Awards for the Newspaper of the Year and Editor of the Year in 2016, what do you think should be the next challenge(s) for the paper?

First, let me say congratulations. I will suggest that in the years ahead, the brand needs to pay more attention to its digital assets. The newspaper today is no longer what we read in printed form. It is content. And content increases. Content is journalism. So, it doesn’t matter in which form you shared the content with consumers. The brand should see how they can get more young readers and see how they can monetize their digital assets, because clearly more and more people are going towards that direction both in terms of advertising and also in terms of consumption of the news. So, I will suggest that in the years ahead they pay a lot more attention to these digital assets to see how they can grow the brand across all digital platforms.

I will also suggest that they will increasingly keep reinventing their storytelling tune. Trust’s Mondays papers are exclusive most of the times. But you see because we live in a 24/7 news circle, you can’t tell people today’s story tomorrow as if they are just hearing about it. So, clearly there is a need in my view for them to do more in terms of investigation and providing contexts for the news because that is what is important the day after the news has happened.

Another thing is for them to keep reinventing the storytelling tools at their disposals. So much of storytelling through texts in our newspapers today. Text is very boring, so we have to have very valuable graphical ways of tools to tell the story apart from texts. Like info-graphics, which Trust is doing well. But there is a whole lot about infographics and other tools that can be used. They should find more creative storytelling tools, and see how they can engage consumers more, which will include both readers and advertisers.

Trust should use more creative pictures. There are too much pictures of crowds in the paper. I am a consumer of Daily Trust and I see too many people packed into one picture that you don’t even know what they are doing or what the point is. I think those are very boring pictures. I think they need to do more about picture art and get into the paper, pictures that are value-adding and tell a story because as they say, ‘a photograph tells more than a thousand words’. This is one of the many graphical tools which can be used to illustrate the story.

I will also like to see more of specialized reporting in the years ahead. I am happy Trust is doing a bit now on golfing but in Nigeria when people talk about sports reporting, they are talking basically about football, which is a very odd way of reporting sports. There are so many other sectors where as the economy expands and knowledge broadens, that require special reporting. Newspapers of the future are newspapers that pay attention to those specialized areas.

Data journalism is also a major new frontier which I will recommend. This is one area that Daily Trust, like other forward looking platforms, should consider what to do with data journalism. There is so much data out there but people don’t have the time or the capacity to process them in such a way that is meaningful to them and to get the readers more engaged. I think the challenge, going forward, is to find a newspaper (and I hope that Trust will make itself available in that area) that would be able to use data in very relevant and meaningful ways to tell the story. Data journalism is almost unexplored. I will like to see a newspaper breaking the grounds in terms of use of data journalism and there are so many tools now that can be used to do that. This is a challenge that I hope Trust will be able to take up.

I will also like to see Trust providing context in news. Hopefully, in the future, I will love to see Trust see itself not just as a newspaper but as a content provider, because that ultimately is where the world is going.

What is your suggestion for on the assumed threat of the online media to traditional news media?

Daily Trust

The assumption is framed in a dichotomous manner to suggest that there is print and there is online and that online is competing with the print. Well, I don’t see it that way. I see the challenge for Trust and the so called legacy platforms as a challenge of adaptation. And it is not this or the other; it is an inclusive race. So, you are not looking at yourself as ‘I am a newspaper and I am competing with online media’; because that same online you think you are competing with is also an extension of the brand. So, it is adaptability that matters and I think that is the key. Therefore, acknowledging the key, you begin to look at the kind of journalists you are recruiting because the world is talking about convergence newsroom where you can have people who can work across platforms. And more and more of such journalists are in demand. So, I hope that Daily Trust will take advantage of this and also raise a core of journalists who can work comfortably across platforms. Journalists, who do not see themselves as print journalists or online journalists or see themselves as competing with online journalism, but see themselves as content providers. Journalists who are able to provide valuable, useful content across platforms.

In five years’ time, what is your expectation for

Daily Trust?

In five years’ time, I hope that Trust would have won many awards not just as the Newspaper of the Year defined more in print category; but as a Platform of the Year, which means it has harnessed its entire digital assets, all assets across platforms to become a leader. That is where I hope the newspaper will go; one that is able to grow and abound and respond to increasing challenges and also one that keeps challenging itself to the standards it has set. I hope and do pray that it will continue to be an ethical newspaper. It’s difficult, but there is no other way to go. I wish the company well.