Online journalists have been advised to embrace partnership and collaboration as a means to enhance professionalism and remain relevant as agents of development.
Chairman, South-West Guild of Online Publishers (SWEGOP), Mr Bisi Oladele, gave the advice while delivering a paper at the launch of a new online media outfit, DailyOpen News (dailyopennews.com), in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Oladele, who delivered the paper on “Online News Publishing and National Development”, said national development, free press and democracy are inseparable.
According to him, online media professionals should engage in partnership and collaboration for improved their economic and human resources capacity.
“Harnessing the skills, experience and resources of each partner to achieve team and individual goals will help us scale faster.
“More professional journalists should join online news publishing to improve quality and professionalism. If we don’t do, others will do, and hire us,” he declared.
Oladele also called for regulations to control online media practice, noting that no profession can gain respect, or serve the society better without regulation.
Such a regulation, Oladele added could either be through the government or self-regulatory among the online media practitioners and organisations.
“As much as we have quite a large number of online media organisations across the country today, there is no form of regulation.
“Unlike the print media that has the Nigerian Press Council (NPC) and the broadcast media that is regulated by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the Nigerian Government is yet to set up a specific regulatory body for online news publishing.
“No profession gains respect, and serves the society better without regulation. Lack of control in the digital news publishing industry is making the industry a hard terrain for professionals who desire to make the kind of impact that the society deserves,” he added.
He therefore recommended that the regulation should be from the government and through established online media associations, including SWEGOP, Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) and Guild of Online Media Practitioners of Oyo State (GOMPOS), among others.
The Speaker at the launch of the DailyOpen News also emphasised the importance of digital journalism declaring that “we are now fully in a digital world. Our world has shifted from physical products and services to digital products and services.
“Education has gone digital; science has gone digital, healthcare, entertainment, business and several aspects of our lives now have digital versions and representations.
“From digital banking, digital insurance operations to digital tax collection and processing, the financial sector has gone fully digital.
“So is communication, of which news publishing is a key aspect. The generation, production, distribution and consumption of news are now fully digital.
“Journalists now source news digitally, process it digitally, distribute digitally, while the public also consumes news digitally. The revolution is already a success; and journalists and news publishers cannot ignore the tide. We all flow with the tide.
“Today, there is only a thin line between news producers and the public as possession of smartphones by virtually every adult empowers them to produce and distribute ‘news’ unfettered.
“That is why we have those christened content creators today. They did not exist yesterday, but they do not just exist today. They shape opinions and serve as influential advertising agents,” he said.
He listed the benefits of digital journalism to include ease of news production and distribution, widened and easy access to information, promotion of entrepreneurship among journalists, low capital requirement, and plurality of perspectives and opinions, enrich of media freedom and democracy.
Oladele, however, did not fail to point out the inherent challenges facing digital news publishing, declaring that professionalism has been endangered.
Other challenges, he said, included digital journalism becoming an all-comer affair, free violation ethics of journalism, lack of credibility, one-sided and fake stories, and threats to truthfulness, objective and fairness all of which are the foundations for news publishing.
