Defending the middle ground of online journalism
It’s easy to use polarizing descriptions of online news-gathering. It’s the domain of citizen journalists, blogging without pay and institutional support, or it’s a sector filled with the digital works of “mainstream media” facing financial worries and struggling to offer employees the protection they once provided. But there is a growing middle ground: trained reporters…
Nigeria’s new FOI law brings celebration, challenges
There is a deserved celebration in the Nigerian media over the recently passed Freedom of Information Act, which provides citizens with broad access to public records and information held by a public official or institution. It is the climax of an 11-year struggle to pass such a law in the Nigerian parliament. Indeed, the call…
Another Nigerian journalist dies in strife-torn Jos
Augustine Sindyi, a veteran photographer for the state-owned weekly Standard newspaper in Plateau State, was walking home from work on Christmas Eve when a nearby bomb explosion killed him instantly. Sindyi resided in a busy Nigerian neighborhood near the local government offices in the center of Jos. The assailants targeted an area that would receive…
Abuja Twitterers chronicle #Nigeriaat50 bomb explosions
A few minutes before deadly explosions ripped through Nigeria’s 50th Independence Day celebration in Abuja on Saturday, Twitter user Achonu Stanley wondered about darkening skies over the festivities: “Would the day be marred by rain? It has become cloudy and dark. Sorry for the thousands of people at Eagle Square.”
With media plan, ANC copies Nigeria’s military rulers
While South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) discusses the party’s proposal for a media appeals tribunal, delegates should take note of a landmark ruling in Nigeria this year in which a High Court judge declared a government-dominated press council unconstitutional.
When the sun set in Nigeria: Dele Giwa’s awful murder
Twenty-three years ago, on October 19, 1986, the sun quite suddenly set at noon. In the brutal darkness, we lost Dele Giwa, just two short years after he and I, along with two other professional journalists, launched Nigeria’s first newsmagazine, Newswatch.
A memorial to killed journalists, a call to action
We’ve launched a new section of our Web site, and we hope you take a few minutes to read some of its pages. There is one, for example, on Russian reporter Natalya Estemirova, who dared to examine human rights crimes in Chechnya. Another is devoted to Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, a Tijuana newspaper editor who…
Q&A: Wife enters journalism after husband’s murder
The killers of Nigerian Editor Bayo Ohu are still a mystery, three weeks after his murder. Now the family of the former Guardian newspaper journalist lives in fear. Ohu was shot dead early on Sunday morning, September 20, by a gang of five armed men and a woman in his apartment in Egbeda, a Lagos…
Journalist killed on a Sunday morning at home in Nigeria
More than two weeks have passed since the cold-blooded killing of Bayo Ohu, assistant news editor and political reporter for the Lagos, Nigeria-based The Guardian. The 45-year-old, soft-spoken workaholic opened the door to his home early on Sunday, September 20, as he prepared for church. According to eyewitnesses and local reports, five gunmen and one female ringleader shot Ohu…
Q & A: Andrew Berends and Aaron Soffin
CPJ interviewed documentary filmmaker Andrew Berends and producer Aaron Soffin at CPJ’s headquarters in New York. Berends spent 10 days in the custody of Nigeria’s State Security Services in Port Harcourt, from August 31 to September 9. He had been in the country for six months working on his film “Delta Boys.” Soffin worked to get…