TRADITIONAL MEDIA SHOULD BRACE UP TO THE TREND OF DIGITAL MEDIA

Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on New Media, Tolu Ogunlesi (left); Chief Executive Officer, Ventra Media Media Group, Daryn Wober; Chief Executive Officer, AIM Higher Consulting, Peace Hyde; Content partnerships Lead, Sub Saharan Africa – YouTube, Teju Ajani and Digital Manager, Nigerian Breweries Plc, Adetomiwa Aladekomo at the ‘Future of Digital Publishing’ to mark Social Media Week in Lagos…yesterday Source; http://www.ngrguardiannews.com

The Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on New Media, Tolu Ogunlesi has advised traditional media to take advantage of digital platform if they want to remain relevant in the industry.

Ogunlesi made this call at the day one of the on-going Social Media Week in Lagos.

According to the Special Adviser, digital platform is shaping the taste of audience, though he felt that the traditional media are not taking advantage of the digital platforms. 

In his words, “If you look at the traditional newspapers, none of them has focused on digital publishing,” he said.

He encouraged the traditional media, which he tagged the legacy media, to begin to explore the advantages of digital platforms, including having videos on their platform. He also believed that digital publishing takes different formats and digital platforms have varied effect with audience. He said some communities might be very in tune with Facebook, Twitter and Instragram, while in some other communities, it could be just downloading video content and sharing it through phones.

Ogunlesi opined that authors and creative minds should not be scared of their works being pirated or stolen on the digital platforms because what is most important at the initial stage is having their works in the public domain so that the audience could appreciate it.

In his words, “ it is when the audience appreciates the works that the benefits and monetisation of the works become an issue. For him, nobody would see and appreciate a poem or a creative work written in a book that is kept at home,” ogunlesi said.

In moving forward, Ogunlesi said that cost of access and speed are two key issues that are limiting the use of digital platforms in Nigeria. For him, the two issues will always continue to define the use of social media platforms in the country.