CONTEMPORARY NEWSPAPER PRODUCTION AND MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA

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By

2016/2017 PhD Mass Communication Class

COM 904: Newspaper and Magazine Management and Production

Department of Mass Communication

Benue State University, Makurdi

Introduction

This is a report of 2016/2017 PhD Mass Communication Class of Benue State University visit to Daily Trust Newspaper office in Abuja on 7th March, 2018. This visit is in line with the requirement of a second semester course (COM 904 – Newspaper and Magazines Management and Production) for every PhD Mass Communication student of Benue State University, Makurdi. Since the course dwells on production and management of Magazines and Newspapers, Daily Trust Newspaper fits into what the course requires.

Media Trust is a privately owned Nigerian newspaper publishing company based in Abuja that publishes the English-language Daily Trust, Weekly Trust, Sunday Trust and the Hausa-language Aminiya newspapers, as well as a new pan-African magazine, Kilimanjaro.

The Weekly Trust was established in March 1998 and the Daily Trust was launched in January 2001. The two papers are the largest circulating newspapers in Northern Nigeria. This group of newspapers rank among the top seven in Nigeria in advertising revenue.

The newspapers have online editions, accessible through www.dailytrust.com and content from the newspapers is republished by AllAfrica and Gamji. The company presents the "Daily Trust African of the Year" award, recognizing and celebrating Africans who have made positive contributions that impact the lives of other people and elicit a pan-African attention during the award year.

They print in four different part of the country; Abuja, Kano, Maiduguri and Lagos. Abuja printing press serves North Central (Abuja, Niger, Benue, Kogi, Plateau,  Kwara and Nasarawa States). Kano printing press serves North West (Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto, Jigawa, Zamfara and Kebbi States). Maiduguri printing press serves North East (Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Taraba, Bauchi and Gombe States) and finally the printing press in Lagos serves thewhole of Southern Nigeria since there is a better transport system down south.

The Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer is Kabiru Abdullahi Yusuf. He was a Senior Lecturer of the Department of Political Science, Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto, and has worked as a columnist and commentator for companies that include the Daily Triumph, Citizen Magazine, Newswatch and BBC Africa Service.

This report is divided in two categories;

1. Operational Category

2. Managerial Category

1. Operational Category

This area covers mostly the editorial aspect in particular and the production process in general. In Daily Trust, process of newspaper production starts with mandatory newsroom editorial meeting. Prior to this, the Advert Department must have produced and distributed the dummy meant to be used for that day’s production. The dummy sheet specifically outlines pages for news, sports, adverts, business news, political news etc. This will practically help line editor or head of various desks to know the number of pages allocated to them and the number of stories cum pictures that will fill them.

Meanwhile, during the editorial meeting in the morning which is specifically for news room staff being presided over by the Editor of Daily Trust Newspaper, the news agenda of the day will be discussed and provision on how to actualize them will also be made. In line with trending online media platform, Daily Trust is using its website to provide this service as the upload stories to their sites as the news breaks. Reporters are expected to use various technological medium to file in breaking news to the news editor so that their readers will have access to the stories as quickly as possible on the website.

As reporters are filing in their stories through their various line editors, the editors do their gate keeping jobs and pass it to the production editor who immediately assigns it to a graphic person for proper page planning. With the printing of a planned page, it goes to the proof readers who check for grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors. This is critical in newspaper production these errors, if unchecked, touches on the integrity of not just the newspaper but also that of the media house.

After diligently proofreading the copy, it will go back to the computer graphic operator to effect these corrections in the soft copy in his system. Immediately after the corrections are effected, the final copy of that particular page will be printed and passed to the editor of the newspaper, who upon certifying it fit for use, sign the copies (which include his signature, date and time of signing it) and pasted on the notice board situated on a conspicuous position in the newsroom. By implication, the page is up for use. With this, no change will be made again in the certified page. Meanwhile, to show the importance of proofreading in Daily Trust Newspaper, any error observed on the cover page and inside pages the next morning, a whooping sum of N25, 000.00 and N15000.00 respectively will deducted from the salary of the Editor of the Newspaper. This is on each error, so if four errors appear on the cover page, the editor has lost N100, 000.00 from his salary on that particular day.

While this cycle is on in a bid to get all the required pages for the production of the newspaper ready, an editorial meeting will be held in the evening around 5pm (on every week day). In Daily Trust, this evening meeting involves all the line editors, news editor and deputy, editor of the newspaper and deputy, managing editor and deputy, Production Editor and deputy then Editor-in-Chief and deputy. The essence of this is to get stories that make the cover page and particularly the headline. Other make ups of the newspaper will also be discussed; example, if they get more adverts than they expect or allotted in the dummy, this meeting will determine the pages that will be removed in order to accommodate the advert (which is where Daily Trust raises the revenue to run the organization). Also, in this meeting, punishments are meted out to editorial staff based on their offences. Remarkably, it is during this meeting that N25, 000.00 will be deducted from the salary of the Editor of the Newspaper in case a grammatical, spelling or punctuation error appears on the cover page. Also, reporters who fail to meet up with deadlines or targets are duly handed their punishments through their line editors. 

After taking these critical editorial decisions especially the cover page and other important business issue, the next line of action will focus on the actual production of the newspaper, and in Daily Trust, it is in two phases; pre-press and the actual printing. When a soft copy of a certified page is sent to pre-press from the Computer/ Production Department, the Chief Operator in Pre-press Department will painstakingly, review all the pictures using software.

The software determines the quality of a picture if printed on a newspaper and if the resolution of the picture is not up to 50 pixels, the software will automatically reject it and mark it “locked”; which means it cannot be used again. The pre-press will immediately alert the production editor and the photo editor who will provide an alternative photo. The photo will still go through the same process before it will be certified okay for the production.

In pre-press, it burns the “negative” plate for the actual printing and makes sure that it is done to precision. To ensure continuity in this process in Daily Trust Newspaper, the management of the organization bought two of these machines in case one develops fault in the course of production. And also, being a business enterprise, and with the quality of the machines they have, the organization has commercialized the printing department as they accept printing jobs from outside business concerns.

Meanwhile, as soon as the Pre-press Department finishes with the burning of the plate, it immediately takes it to the Printing Department for the actual printing of the hard copy of the newspaper. In the Printing Department, the plate they received from the Pre-press Department will be wrapped on a roller cylinder and placed strategically in the printing machine which contains various colours of ink. As the “negative” turns inside the printer and makes contact with the ink and papers, it produces “positive” print out on the paper which turns out to be the DAILY TRUST NEWSPAPER. The printing machine performs dual function of printing and arranging the newspapers sequentially. It is pertinent to state here that in Daily Trust Newspaper, the organization approves the usage of newsprint papers for the production of its newspapers. The newsprints are bought in rims and could be recycled (though the recycling is not done in Daily Trust).  

According to Mr. Nasir Imam, the Deputy Managing Editor of Daily Trust, who was our guide during the facility tour, the actual printing of the newspaper starts at 9pm every day. At this time, no editorial content would be allowed or accepted except breaking news or paid adverts.Meanwhile, one of the reasons of starting printing at 9pm is to synchronize the printing of the newspaper in all the four printing points or press of the organization in the country (Abuja, Maiduguri, Kano and Lagos)

Immediately the printing commences, the Distribution Department staff must be at hand to collect the printed newspaper for distribution. They (Distribution Department) work throughout the night to ensure that the newspapers get to the various states of the federation and also to be in the hands of the vendors as early as possible the next morning.

In the words of Nasir Iman, “Pages are then sent to Pre-press unit for plate making before going for printing. The Production Manager supervises the printing which usually commences by 9pm and after printing, the newspaper is packaged and distributed to various designated points.Distributors and Marketers ensure proper circulation of the paper so as to ensure minimum unsold copies that have to be returned” he concluded.

Also, it is very important to mention the salient function being performed by Library Department of the organization. The library houses all the past editions of Daily Trust Newspaper in both hard and soft copies. With the competent staff they have, it is very easy to research on issues or past editions of the newspaper.

2. Managerial Category

The managerial category of the organization will be better explained by the organization’s Organogram as given to us by our guide Mr. Nasir Imam.

Daily Trust Editorial Organogram

[Value Chain (Bottom up approach)]

Reporter-News Editor or Line Editor (Reporter writes story and submits to News or Line Editor)

News Editor Computer Operator - (Reports gathers, edits and forwards to Computer Operator)

Computer Operator-Production Editor - (Operator lays the page according to dummy provided by Production Editor)

Production Editor-Sub Editor (Copy desk re-writes the pages)

Editor vets all the pages



MANAGEMENT

Chairman, Board of Directors;

Directors;

CEO/E-i-C;

Chief Operations Officer (COO);

Deputy Editor in Chief;

Associate Director/ Business & Strategy;

GM, Mangt. Services;

Company Secretary/Legal Adviser

Board of Directors

Kabiru A. Yusuf, Chairman of the Board and CEO

A former University Lecturer, Kabiru was editor – Daily Triumph, Today and Citizen Magazine and, was Southern African Correspondent of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He has also written for Newswatch and Daily Times. He holds B.Sc/MSc Political Economy from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria and University of Toronto, Canada. Kabiru was Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief for many years and is now the Chairman and Chief Executive officer.

 Isiaq A. Ajibola (Director)

 An experienced media practitioner, Ajibola worked at Citizen and Sentinel magazines and was pioneer General Manager of Media Trust Ltd, and later became the Executive Director (Operations) and is now the Managing Director and Chief operations Officer. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Trustee's of Nigeria and an alumnus of the Business School, University of Stellenbosch, Capetown. He holds a B.Sc Economics degree and MBA from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

 Mannir Dan Ali: Executive Director

 Born on the 13th of May 1964 at Kayauki in Katsina state, he attended primary schools at Ketare and Kankara both in Katsina state before gaining admission to Rimi College Kaduna in 1976. Upon completion of his studies there he attended the College of Advanced Studies, Zaria before proceeding to Bayero University Kano where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English in 1986. Mannir returned to the same university for graduate studies and completed an M.A degree in English Literature in 1990.

 His had his first experience in the media with the defunct Citizen Magazine in Lagos, first as special project staff, and later as a reporter between 1992 and 1993. He also worked on freelance basis with the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1994. Between August 1997 and February 2000, Mannir worked for the BBC World service at its Bush House headquaters in London before relocating back to Nigeria where he set up the Abuja Bureau of the African service. He assumed duty as Media Trust’s Editor-in Chief in 2007.

Umaru Abdullahi (Director)

 Holds a B.Sc. Accounting from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He had a stint with NNPC before going into private business. A widely traveled financial consultant, Alhaji Abdullahi is Managing Director of Lagos based Intra-Africa International.

Bello Damagum (Director)

An international businessman, he holds a B.Sc. Accounting from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. After working in the Nigeria National Shipping Line, he is now a Property Developer in Abuja and Kaduna.

Abdullahi Shuaibu (Director)

Chairman/Chief Executive of Kaduna based Agromatrix Nigeria Limited. He holds a B.Sc. in Business Administration from ABU, Zaria and worked for many years as manager of SCOA Nig. Ltd. in many parts of Nigeria.

Rabiu Garba (Director)

He is the Chairman/Managing Director of Espee Printing and Advertising Limited, Kaduna. He holds a HND in Printing Technology from the Kaduna Polytechnic, Kaduna.