Hypothesis: Nigerian blogs tend to succeed where newspaper sites have failed or refused to go. Linda Ikeji is successful because entertainment journalists don't like to post damaging rumors about their famous friends. Sahara Reporters is successful because newspapers refuse to publish unconfirmed rumors & 'sensitive' news. True?



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Is Seun correct ?

Yes, in theory.

Seun:

Yes, in theory.

not true!

nigerian newspapers fail because of the abject poverty in the country. newspapers should be the cheapest commodity in nigeria but i think it's too expensive. i believe newspapers should be 1/20th of the minimum wage per hour in any country but that's not the case in nigeria.
in a nutshell, the internet is cheaper in nigeria than buying newspapers - so it's a no brainer!

most newspapers think they will sell more when all they publish is mainly politics (which all Nigerians are fed up with), but the truth is that they fail more. You can only read about other spheres of life online. Personally, i prefer reading economist.com than vanguardngr.com.

I personally don't think price has anything to do with it. If a paper presents solid information, those who will buy it, will buy it, period!

Bear in mind that physical newspapers are dying worldwide. It's all about the internet. People have short attention spans and so they want info that is short, sharp and to the point. I don't know about Nigeria, but in my locale, generally speaking, people don't have time to turn pages of a physical paper. Majority of news is gotten online. I for one visit 10 Nigerian news sites a day to glean what is on their home page.

For newspapers (physical or online) to succeed in Nigeria IMHO, they need to, among others:
1) Cater to their target audience
2) Have a good ad revenue model
3) Engage the readers (comments, etc)
4) Avoid too much grammar and actually communicate with the reader
5) Ensure that the news topic matches what the article actually talks about (I see this violation a lot on the online papers)
6) Be original and not borrow- borrow from competitors