JOURNALISM IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD
Shortly after the meeting, he hurried home and picked up his sturdy pair of boots, serpentine old buffalo horn, and 11-year-old stuttering son who was tired of waiting for him and fitfully dozed on their rickety wooden stool. Although a light rain had begun to fall shortly after they set out for the announcements, the air could still transport the reverberations of his artfully crafted horn to the community already curled up in their beds. Dan Borno was specifically chosen for this job six years ago because of his voice — while he blew his buffalo horn to draw the people’s attention, his shrill voice transmitted even farther than his horn, like a foghorn, penetrating walls and doors into the earlobes of people.
Young stuttering Isah had been following his father to break news to the public at a self-conscious age of 3. He’d grown fond of his father’s job but couldn’t see himself taking after his father because of his mild speech impediment. Young ones used to endear themselves to him to learn more about an announcement or accentuate the veracity of a story since he and his father were the receivers of first-hand information. Isah was an intelligent boy in school; he’d begin to read books on science and technology and learn how that can authoritatively transform the world from its primitive and antiquated ways to a sophisticated and urbane one: His crier father and his guild around the world would no more be seen combing their communities shouting news and official announcements because of the technological advancements that would soon enrapture society.
Isah would become a professor of journalism few years later and teach his students the evolution of the journalism profession, Journalism 101; he’d tell them that the Internet is the ultimate disrupter of journalism. With the emergence of the Internet, international papers such as Wall Street Journals and New York Times, regional newspaper publishers in Gauteng, Guardian and Leadership papers all find themselves in fierce competition with political blogs and social media accounts, all hasty and bratty to break news. The attendant consequences of this are the decline in trust in the media, proliferation of fake news, politicization of the media, etc.
However, even as the major disrupter of journalism, the new/digital media has contributed to democratizing information by further enhancing the interactive nature of the media. In fact, it was the advent of new media, which facilitates the sharing of information among citizens, that made it necessary to tear a new leaf in journalism called “citizens journalism”.
Old Zaria City of 1943 in which the late town crier Dan Borno walked through, in rain and darkness, shouting news and announcements, is not the same Old Zaria City of 2021 in which Professor Isah is now an old journalism professor equipping young ones to become a modern version of his father — Bashir Ahmed and Tolu Ogunlesi.
