The Nigerian Xpress was created to fill a niche, says Nwosu

Success Damian:

Nigerian media industry overtime has comparatively flourished doing a yeoman’s job as the fourth Estate of the realm. It has not only succeeded in standing the various administrations in the country on their toes, acting as a watchdog, it has also worked assiduously to contribute its verifiable quota towards nation building and development.

Notwithstanding its huge contributions, the nation’s media industry still faces varied but not insurmountable challenges, the latest being the emergence of social media platforms making it an all comers affair.

In the midst of all these arose a yawning gap needed to be filled no wonder on December 22, 2018, a new paper called The Nigerian Xpress published by The Xpress Publications Limited was born.

The event which held at Colonade Hotel, Ikoyi, Lagos attracted crème de la crème not just from the media industry, but also from across the political and economic firmament of Nigeria.

Steve Nwosu, who introduced himself as a Journalist and chief servant of the occasion is the Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Nigerian Xpress.

While speaking on the vision driving the new paper, Nwosu maintained that the paper was designed to fill a niche, ”We just feel there is a niche we can fill, that niche is the niche of citizen’s generated copy, citizen’s generated news. Incidentally we came out with dual catch-line, one is news as it breaks and the unwritten one is news as you like it.

“Sometimes sales are dwindling, online is coming up, it might be that there is something the readers want that we are not giving them. So we want them to give us that thing they need, then we put it professionally and then publish, that is one. Then we also want to play strong in politics, and business, that is the edge and we fill there is a space for us to fill in the market; that is why we are coming out and at a time like this too,” Nwosu disclosed.

He went further to reveal other reasons for formation of the paper which include job creation for teeming population, national development, expanding the frontiers of the industry, among other reasons.

Nwosu who assembled an array of seasoned professionals as management of the new paper also disclosed some of the challenges being faced by the media industry. 

He said the media is regarded as the fourth estate of the realm which regrettably has no authority to perform its mandate. “What are the other three estates, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary? All the other arms have budgets allocated to them, but nothing to the media. And yet we are expected to be patriotic and serve this country with the last drop of our blood. They are not even patronizing the media enough to begin with. Adverts are going on now and they are talking of monitoring spending and where everybody has their eyes is the advert runs in the media, they don’t even want pay for anything, they want you to do it free, that is one, major problem is that we are given a responsibility without the necessary funds, without the authority, to carry out those responsibilities, authority in this sense being funds.”

Nwosu averred that reading culture has nosedived abysmally even as the online media is coming up strong, “Online is taking over everywhere. They allow everybody to crash into the industry, then they regard everybody as a journalist, but when there is real problem, they begin to blame the real journalists.”

He decried low investment in the media saying “There has not been any serious investment in the media, nobody is genuinely investing in the media, so we are talking of the problem of declining reading culture, online challenge and low funding of the media. That is why it appears the media is really suffering.”

On the way forward, he said “In the next five years I see us competing favourably with the big national newspapers and may be looking beyond the frontiers of Nigeria.”

On partnership with other individuals he said “We are still looking for partners, what you are seeing is just the sweat of many of us put together and then, you know people don’t like to invest until they see it is on. So we have just done it in a way that we can sustain on our own if they don’t come, but we also have a template for blowing sooner than later, we have a growth pattern charted for ourselves, we are also careful about money bags coming in, but then if it comes we know how to use it, if it doesn’t we know how to move on without it.”

He stated that the platform is going to play strong in online publication, saying “Majority of our reporters are online people, because whether we like it or not it is the way Journalism is going,” Nwosu maintained.