By Moses Nosike

In its commitment to strengthen and advance the growth of Nigeria’s media profession, 9mobile recently concluded its second edition of capacity-building session for journalists from different news desks.

Themed “News Reporting: Using Analytics in News Gathering and Understanding of Audience Profile”, the session was facilitated by experienced multimedia producer and social media strategist, Usifo Omozokpea, who is currently the Audience Development Manager (West Africa) at The Conversation Africa.

According to Omozokpea, the use of analytics in news gathering is critical in navigating the ever competitive battle for attention. “The dynamics of journalism has long changed, in addition to dealing with a dwindling budget, news outlets are faced with attracting audience attention as audience can no longer be taken for granted. This poses a central challenge for journalism as its role is premised on connecting with an audience.

Omozokpea noted that audience data is a complement to the journalist’s intuition. “There is always the firsthand experience. At this point, what analytics does is to provide guide on how to tell the story better using appropriate headlines, graphics, photos, descriptions etcetera, while keeping the audience in mind.”

In addition, the Executive Director, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs, 9mobile, Abdulrahman Ado, represented by 9mobile’s PR Lead, Chineze Amanfo, described the choice of topic and facilitator as apt given the robust response from participants.

She said, “We appreciate the fact that this training session was worth the time spent, the immediate feedback of participants indicates clearly that the session was not only interesting, but very insightful and refreshing.  We will continue to provide the platform to equip our media partners with the skills required to scale up their practice and adapt effectively to the rapidly changing news landscape”.

Deji Fakorede, one of the participants at the training session remarked that it was insightful, relevant and timely as well.