Oso canvasses more practical approach to teaching journalism
Prof. Lai Oso
A mass communication teacher, Prof. Lai Oso, has advocated that media practitioners should be given the opportunity to teach communication students. By so doing, he stressed the view that the practitioners would impart in the students hands-on skills as against the theoretical approach prevalent in universities and polytechnics at the moment. He, however, stated thatthe National Universities Commission (NUC) might be a major challenge in achieving this objective coupled with challenges of the Nigerian mass media.
Oso gave the advice against the backdrop of mass communication graduates finding hard to fit into the practical aspects of their training in the newsroom. According to Oso, who teaches at the School of Communications, Lagos State University, NUC’s minimum benchmark provides some balance between the theory and the practical aspects of journalism.
“I think the problem that we have is this insistence on Ph.D. Many lecturers today have Ph.D, the theory, but they have never practised journalism. They teach news writing, more or less, from the textbook, but not based on their experience in the field. NUC people came and said everybody must have Ph.D without making a distinction between some courses that are both practical and theoretical.”
He emphasised the need to make a distinction between teaching a course like mass communication that is different from a course like history.
He said, “It is just like accounting. You cannot see everybody with Ph.D without having some practical experience. We really need to go back to basics. We need to have a blend of the people who are from the industry who would teach the real professional courses of writing – feature writing, editorial writing, programme production, script writing for television and radio. You can’t teach these from a textbook. NUC is our problem; if they come now for accreditation and you have people without Ph.D, they do not count them as staff”.
He lamented that many young people with Bachelor of Science degrees who are really brilliant, and possibly on scholarships, went straight to do Masters and Ph.D, and became lecturers afterwards without any newsroom or behind the camera experience.
“In Lagos State University School of communications,” he noted, “we have been trying to bring some professionals here from time to time to teach our students. In terms of role modelling, the students can identify with these idols as people in the real practice and aspire to be like them. We need to have people from the newsroom who would say, ‘let me go there for three months,’ and probably sponsored by the organisation as most universities do not have the money. And of course, academics also, during their sabbaticals, could go to the newsroom and learn the practical aspect of the profession.”
Also, Oso pointed out some perceived challenges facing the Nigerian media, which he said are related to credibility.“If you do a perception study of readers,” he said, “I think you are likely to come out with the findings that many Nigerians do not really believe what they get from the mass media, and it has been a gradual thing. The challenges of ownership, the general feeling in Nigeria that he who owns the piper dictates the tune applies to the media. Though it may not necessarily be so, but there have been evidences of such, especially during political campaigns. During controversial issues in the country, we see the heavy hands of the owners in the editorial content.
“There is also the issue of ethnic orientation. For instance, someone from the north may decide that, ‘oh, this paper is from the east, and so it is likely to be pro-east’, without trying to critically evaluate what the paper had done. The problem of ethics – though I don’t really believe it is a problem, because ethics is a definitional problem – here, there is the issue of house style to consider. So, what is good for one media house may not be for the other. It is when there is blatant falsehood that we would say this one has crossed the line”.
He said the issue of staff welfare is a major concern as many media organisations do not pay, and when they pay, it is hardly enough to shield the journalist from being influenced. As he put it, “Though that cannot be divorced from the general economic situation in the country, but how many newspapers are really selling and how many advertising agencies are paying?”
The professor advised that in order to tackle some of these problems, “some people have advised that the media organisations need to go back to their editorial policy and philosophy in terms of their content and see whether they are really serving the people or they are just serving a small group of people – the elite, particularly in the type of stories and issues they pay attention to.”
He also said the Nigerian media needed to do audience research, especially in broadcasting, to find out what the audience would want to listen to or watch. According to him, today’s broadcasting could not be compared to when it started, adding, “Many broadcasters were doing audience research to get the voice of the people. It was like, ‘what do we do to really mirror the concerns of the society’”.
He further advised that the conventional media must do the right thing to weaken the unethical practice of so-called social media journalists.
According to him, “If people believe that they are getting the right information from the conventional media, whether offline or online, they will patronise the so-called quark online journalists less. The mainstream media needs to put its act together. The mass communication curriculum must also include training in the use of social media as a journalistic platform. You cannot eliminate these people anymore as they continue to expand”.
On whether the digitisation deadline of December 2017 was achievable, the scholar expressed optimism, saying, “The technology is there already, and it is just the resources, especially in terms of capital that is delaying us. Manpower, you can easily train people; there are a lot of young people who can do this, but government needs to put the money down for the technical work to be done. We missed the previous dates because the money was not there, but the time will come when it will become unprofitable for us to continue with the analogue. So, government will have no choice than to look for the money”.
In order for traditional media to reinvent itself to keep up with the pressure from social media, Oso said the reinvention had already started, as almost all the mainstream media organisations have online presence. He added, “We even have some of them inviting the citizens to contribute through online. I don’t think it is correct to say that the new media will drive out the old media, but it will be a complimentary thing.
You will find out that the old media will incorporate some of the features of the new media as well as the new media incorporating some of the features of the old media. Any media that fails to see the emerging trend, and fails to take the opportunity, will find it difficult to survive. It is a question of accountability, training and retraining.
“The conventional media houses must train their staff to be able to take opportunities, and take the advantage of this new media. I will find it difficult to believe that there is any newsroom in the country that is not computerised. You can send in stories from anywhere because you want to be in the market as fast as you can; this is part of the reinvention process.”
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