With all the hoopla surrounding President Umaru Yar’Adua’s health, I forgot to say hello to The Guardian newspaper. According to the Nigeria Media Merit Awards (NMMA) Foundation, which took nearly one year to make up its mind about the 2008 winners, The Guardian is the “Newspaper of the Year.”
The NNMA also announced that Mr. Debo Adesina, the newspaper’s editor, is the “Editor of the Year.” It is his third title, having won it in 2005 and 2006.
I write this article for the records. Both The Guardian and its editor probably deserve to be congratulated, but not by me.
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I want to make it clear I have read The Guardian for a long time, since its inception in the early 1980s. At that time, the NMMA did not exist. If it did, The Guardian would probably have won in every category. It was an excellent, competitive and confident paper.
At that time, it had the men and women, the ideas and the depth. It had both ambition and “sterner stuff.” It provided leadership and inspiration. You wanted to buy your own copy. Better still, you wanted to own your own copy.
Not today. Today’s The Guardian resembles the original only in name. In a professional sense, they do not even belong in the same town talk less of being on the same page.
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For me, therefore, although today’s The Guardian may win laurels, such awards must be qualified. They must be understood and accepted only in the sense that in the country of the blind, the one blind man is king. In a land of whores, the beauty queen is a whore.
Regrettably, the Chairman of the NNMA Award Panel, Prince Tony Momoh, did not seem to notice any such paradox when he praised the winner in the newspaper category. Once a journalist himself, Momoh should have announced that he could find no newspaper worthy of the honour.
Not Momoh, who made his name at the Daily Times when the Daily Times defined journalism in this country. Rather than cover his mouth as he spoke—if he could not refuse to speak—Momoh said (and I am quoting The Guardian itself): “The Guardian's in-depth reportage, fairness and reach marks it as the best in the country, stressing that the paper had truly lived up to its name as the leader in the industry to win the Babatunde Jose Prize.”
This is an insult to Babatunde Jose, who was known for professional excellence.
But wait! Momoh had more. The Guardian—The Guardian quoted him as saying—“had maintained high standards” and satisfied the 25-man nominating committee for this year's award.
I think that all 25 of them were lying on their backs. That always means that everything is high or tall.
And of course, if The Guardian won the category of the best newspaper, it follows that its editor must be the best. That is usually the fixture.
And you knew the fix was in when the NNMA described Mr. Adesina as a “high-profile editor.”
High-profile? What is this, politics or modeling? Editors are not professionally high-profile. They are either good or bad.
A few, of course, are excellent. Ordinarily, Mr. Adesina would not be one of those. But I guess we must remember we are describing that land of the blind, or country of the whores.
In this category, the NNMA went further to discredit its own cause when it stated that its winner—and I am quoting The Guardian again—“has continually distinguished himself since he became the youngest editor in the country then at the age of 27, just about four years after joining The Guardian stable in 1988.”
It is funny that the NNMA felt the need to make this point. The last time Mr. Adesina won the award, somebody placed it on the front page of The Guardian that he was the youngest person in Nigeria ever to edit a national newspaper.
Now, Mr. Adesina did not remove that gratuitous falsehood from his own front page, suggesting he wanted it there. He did not publish a correction. Nor did the NNMA, which hopes to be remembered as some kind of authority on journalism, cause a retraction to be prominently published.
That is unfortunate. Nigeria is not a Banana Republic of half a million people. And unless you are professionally dishonest or care nothing about the history of your own profession, you would know that many people in our country have edited important journals at a younger or similar age.
I suspect that although editors at The Guardian have usually come in at an older age range—because the institution stressed education, experience and excellence, rather than ego—some prominent journalists have been much younger.
But I know important editors that have been younger. Off the top of my head, they would include Muyiwa Adetiba, who was such a star at such an early age he did not want to be an editor; Segun Osoba, who was going to become a lawyer before he realized he was already a journalist; and Peter Enahoro.
But I am sure neither the NNMA nor Mr. Adesina have ever heard of Enahoro, who became editor at 3, 5 & 7 at age 23. 3, 5 and 7 is not an ancient or inside joke: it was the Kakawa Street address of the Daily Times (when DT was DT).
My point is not that it is not important to edit The Guardian at 27, but that it is irrelevant. What is relevant is that is the quality of journalism that is exhibited. Dele Giwa is not remembered for his youth. Dele Olojede is not celebrated for his age. Lade Bonuola’s impact on Nigerian and The Guardian has to do with quality and impact, not youth.
When I pick up a newspaper, I do not look for, or remember how old the editor is, but how good the paper is. If the paper is compelling, I may choose to learn a bit of its editor. If it is forgettable, as The Guardian often is today, it is better for the editor if I do not even know his name.
The Guardian may be our “best,” but it is not a good paper. It is poorly-written and horrendously edited. To win his award, Mr. Adesina is said to have beaten two other nominees, Steve Ayorinde of The Punch and Simon Kolawale of ThisDay Newspapers.
Really? First of all, I do not consider ThisDay a newspaper; that Mr. Kolawole was in the race was therefore a joke. But I do not consider today’s The Guardian to be better than today’s The Punch, which is courageous, writes follows up stories, and is grammatically dependable.
I am not sure what big story The Guardian did in 2008, what great reporter it trained, or what cogent and pungent editorials (apart from those unreadable rigmaroles) it published. Only months ago, it bungled the President Umaru Yar’Adua, turning a remarkable opportunity into a public relations coup for Yar’Adua. That is not the stuff of a great newspaper or a great editor.
Mr. Adesina wants to be recognized for achieving something great while he was still so young, but that is not the point. The point is for him to DO something while he has the position. An editorship is a professional position, not a chieftaincy. An editor has to prove he knows journalism; Mr. Adesina has not convinced me. You have to prove worthy of your medals.
I feel sad that the NNMA has such low standards. And that it put together 25 “wise men,” but there was neither wisdom nor honesty in the room. You do not need 25 people to recognize poor quality. Nor do you try to sanitize or sell it.
What you do with poor quality is throw it away. That way—no offence meant, The Guardian, Mr. Adesina—hopefully from the manure, a good plant will germinate. Encouraged, as the NNMA is doing, poor quality becomes “acceptable.” That is a tragedy.
I call on the NNMA to take another look at what it is doing. The Foundation should not be promoting professional standards that are spiraling every year. But this does not look likely in the future.
Chief Alade Odunewu, who chairs the NMMA, noted at the awards that they were created to promote excellence in the Nigeria media.
My point exactly, NNMA. But listen: you promote excellence by identifying it. And—when you find mediocrity, you call it by name. If the NNMA cannot do this, the Foundation is more junk than its bogus annual awards.
[No, NNMA, I cannot send this article to The Guardian. Of course they will not publish it, that I know, but the immediate problem is that the e-mail address of the ‘Newspaper of the Year’ never works.]
Greatness?
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