The morning we filmed at a Lagos newspaper stand was the first time I’d seen a physical newspaper in almost three years. I’m a journalist, and I grew up in the 90s, when the paper was a fixture on Nigerian dining tables.
The vendor we filmed puts it down to the internet, and so would most people, but the papers were in trouble well before that. The Structural Adjustment Programme pushed up the cost of newsprint in 1986, and after 1999 an advertising boom hid how few people were still buying. Then, from 2016, advertisers moved online, where the papers were giving their news away for free.
You’ll hear from two Lagos vendors who watched it happen from their stands. One of them on the people who still gather at his: “They will still come, but they will not buy. They just want to know the headline.”
The film ends on a question I have a stake in, running Notadeepdive: when nobody pays for the news, how does serious reporting get made?
P.S. When did you last buy a newspaper? Tell me in the comments under the video.
The vendor's line that people still come to the stand but only want the headline says a lot. It makes me think the same trap exists online now, where traffic looks healthy while very few people actually pay. Since the papers were weak before the internet arrived, what do you think is the first thing a new Nigerian outlet should get right to be paid for?