THERE WILL BE INK - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

completely make use of some of the new skills they had learned. Joke Kujenya, a journalist with TheNation, said that she bought a digital recorder in the U.S. during a training trip and was disheartenedthat her coworkers back at The Nation were so excited by it. She thinks such commonplacejournalistic tools “shouldn’t be a big deal.” In other cases, journalists returned to their officesfeeling that their editors – who had not been on trainings with them – did not grasp the fullimportance of their new approach to reporting. Kirk Robertson Leigh, a freelance journalist, reportsthat through training he “picked up the concept of – so what? – a very important concept. Iremember having an argument with my editor here on how you report. I was becoming an apostleof the ‘so what?’, but it’s lacking here. You know, when I ask why don’t you guys do it this way theirreply is, we’ve always been doing it this way.”There was some sentiment among journalists, however, that this is changing. A former journalistfrom This Day contended that the market demand for good stories is growing steadily. “If journalistsare trained better, and they churn out good stories” he said, “it will be a function of demand andsupply. The market demands for these stories. The publishers will be forced to publish thesestories.” 86 A journalist from Punch backed up this sentiment when he said, “Obviously they willpublish it, and be ready to see the consequences. I can assure you that if something is good, if it istruthful, Punch will publish it. It is not owned by a politician. If something is truthful and everyoneelse rejects it, Punch will publish it and damn the consequences. This paper and some others arewilling to go to any lengths to publish the truth. There are not many, but they are there.” 87Impact on Pay and BenefitsLow remuneration is a major cause of flight from the profession and one reason why journalistsoften take bribes from their sources. Also, because of their low pay, “Most journalists are not able toresist the temptation of bribery or corruption,” said a journalist with Punch. “If I am earning $1000here, then I am earning $2000 in America, and others are earning one quarter of that in some of theplaces here. That is why some journalists are not even ready to listen to something that is upright,they want to survive. But I believe with a good pay and good condition of services, journalists willstand up and fight. There are newspapers here that have not paid their journalists for four months.”88A stringer for the New York Times said that the average monthly wage for an editor is N200K(~$1300) to N300K (~$2000) a month, which he said is equivalent to entry-level pay for a bank.“Sometimes what you have not earned in the last twenty years [as a journalist] you get to earn in justa few months [at a bank].” 89It is important to evaluate whether or not trainings will increase pay and benefits for journalists inNigeria. In our survey, we found that 61.5 percent of respondents reported receiving increased payafter training. When asked to explain the connection between training and pay increases, thecommon response was that trainings themselves didn’t automatically result in higher pay, but that astheir reporting improved from training, their editors took notice and often their pay level was raisedas a result. Some journalists reported that their pay increased relatively soon after their trainings. Ajournalist with Business Day said he believed his pay increases have been a “reward for my workprobably, as a result of applying what I learnt in the course of my training to the work.” 90 As86 Nigerian Interviewee #20. 2009. Interview by Ben Colmery. Lagos, Nigeria, January 15.87 Nigerian Interviewee #4. 2009. Interview by Ben Colmery. Lagos, Nigeria, January 13.88 Nigerian Interviewee #4. 2009. Interview by Ben Colmery. Lagos, Nigeria, January 13.89 Nigerian Interviewee #24. 2009. Interview by Ben Colmery. Lagos, Nigeria, January 16.90 Nigerian Interviewee #22. 2009. Interview by Ben Colmery. Lagos, Nigeria, January 9.– 29 –