African newspapers urged to repackage news to compete with Internet
Management of newspaper industries in Africa have been advised to devise better strategies of packaging news to enable them to compete with the Internet world.
This is because many people do not read newspapers and prefer using the Internet, a situation which is rapidly collapsing a lot of newspapers in the world, especially African countries and other developing nations.
The Editor of the Wire Services Department of Kyodo News Agency of Japan, Yoichi Kosukegawa, gave the advice during a lecture on ” A News Agency Transforming for the Multi-Media Age”, at a World Media Summit Training Programme.
It was organized by the Xinhua News Agency, for African and Asian Journalists to enable participants appreciate emerging technological challenges in the media landscape, in Beijing, China.
The Summit that was launched as joint proposal of Xinhua News Agency, News Cooperation, the Associate Press, Reuters, Kyodo News Agency of Japan, British Broadcasting Cooperation, Turner Broadcasting System and Google, and hosted by Xinhua News Agency, attracted Journalists from Africa, including Ghana, and Asia.
Mr Kosukegawa said that there was the need for management of newspapers to focus on in-depth analysis reporting, good commentaries, investigative journalism and feature stories among others.
He asked management of newspapers to pay attention on educational programmes for adults and children, which most newspapers in Japan were doing successfully, adding that it was selling well despite the existence of the Internet.
Mr Kosukegawa advised newspapers to diversify the media landscape to include other advanced technological services such as Internet, mobile phone, smart phones and digital signage as was being done in Japan.
He noted that the newspaper was a major tool for fighting corruption and expressing opinion and should not be allowed to collapse.
Mr Kosukegawa called on media managers to sponsor the training of Journalists to enable them to become multi-media personnel and to overcome global challenges.
Mr Marc DeTemple and Mr Mark Chishoim both Video Journalists of Reuters Television (TV), took participants through the topic” International Television Agencies, Video Journalism and New Technology” and war reporting.
Mr DeTemple tasked TV Journalists to start their news with powerful story telling pictures since it was the best method to capture the attention of the audience.
He noted that there were a lot of narrations associated with most African TV stations with little show of pictures, making it difficult for the audience to comprehend messages as majority of the people were illiterates.
Source: GNA