I am about concluding my stay at the Afrika-StudieCentrum (ASC), University of Leiden. I will be giving a seminar on my work here on Tuesday March 23. In the last few weeks, I have tried to do a paper on the current conditions and perceptions of the guerrilla journalists in Nigeria. By this term I mean those journalists who confronted the military and were brutalised and driven underground. I have sought to know what their take is on the current democratic dispensation. I had interviewed some of them and examined some of their writings. The result is a thirty-page paper which I reduced to two pages for this blog. You can read that two-page summary here.
1 comment:
Hello,
In the middle of last year, I risked elements of my objective purview to recommend a number of guerilla news sites that focus on Nigeria because the mainstream organs did not touch topics that allowed for the state misuse of the security apparatus to harass them.
By December, I highlighted the popularity of Sahara Reporters when their picture of the "Nigerian Terrorist" became the global reference of news wires and I recommended they make some changes to their editorial policy for quality, comment moderation for sensibility and funding structure for professionalism.
I got savaged by comments stemming from my recommendations which became the source for a blog I wrote about Nigerian contemporary commentary.
I fear to say, SR's popularity has made it lose its edge, they have since then become a marketplace of perverse opinions and quarrelsome pundits.
One then wonders if indeed we have any guerilla pressmen today, especially in these times that require insightful, diligent, observant and astute journalists to opine on Nigerian matters in these rather turbulent times.
Regards,
Akin
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