By Isaac Ato MENSAH
Accra – 19 December, 2018.
The Daily Graphic newspaper is dead, but the Graphic Group survives in other forms.
The obsequies of the Daily Graphic newspaper was observed on 13 December, 2018 in an article right under the editorial titled, “Taking a bow”.
It was written by Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh, a lawyer and former editor of the Graphic in his column “Thinking aloud”.
Two sentences from his article will suffice…..
“Just like Zinedine Zidane decided to leave Real Madrid Football Club as a coach, at a time he had achieved back to back wins in the European Championship football, a rare feat, I am leaving column writing at a time that research reports available to the research department of the Graphic Communications Group suggest that ‘Thinking aloud‘ commands more readership than any column or feature in the Daily Graphic.
“Until the demise of Mr KB Asante and the end of his Voice From Afar column, the two of us were reported to control at least 50% of feature and column readers in the paper.”
On 19 November, 2018, in our article titled The 23rd GJA Awards – Quotations #3 (Dartey on Editors), we gave the Daily Graphic a grim review.
We stated, ‘Whilst the Graphic Team is celebrating, the rest of the discerning public is saying: ‘Who buys Graphic anyways and who reads Graphic at all?’.
We quoted Professor Audrey Gadzekpo, dean of the School of Information and Communication Studies as saying on the death of the newspaper that content will still be needed, writing will still be relevant.
There is no controversy that Daily Graphic is Ghana’s most influential newspaper.
But the killer question is ‘How does a newspaper become an influential newspaper?’.
Is it when its stories are used in newspaper reviews?
Is it when it wins awards?
Or is it when it educates the public with informed, well researched and balanced reportage?
We wish Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh well in his new position as chairperson of the National Media Commission (NMC).
In that new position, all the matters concerning the Ghanaian media and their role in national development will come before him.
And he will be expected to pronounce on them in a prompt and candid manner.
It is our prayer that he will not be talked into keeping quiet.
The bigger issues of ensuring that the Ghanaian media grow in better content is already up for discussion and it does not take an improved and higher budget allocation from the government of Ghana to do that.
A more balanced content including the false dominance of the Twi language in the electronic media has been written about by us in several articles published on this blog.
With the death of the Daily Graphic newspaper, English reading has suffered another blow and the electronic media will have another upward climb in any data collection exercise.
Will Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh obfuscate on this matter?
Or will the bigger issues of cultural diversity based on facts, evidence and reason, win the day under his chairmanship of the media commission?
Will 2019, the Year of indigenous languages, as declared by the United Nations mean anything to the NMC and the electronic media in Ghana?
Will it be said that under his watch the indigenous people of Accra received justice through their language receiving a fair and equitable representation based on a proper media content policy directive?
The clock starts ticking now, but the time bomb has been around for a long time.
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