By
Ashley
Nguyen
 |
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Oluwatoyosi Ogunseye. Pic by Ashley
Nguyen/JNet
|
Oluwatoyosi Ogunseye, the first woman
and youngest journalist to edit Nigeria's widely read Sunday
Punch newspaper, believes there is one thing that makes a
story worth pursuing.
"I have a passion for stories that
change society," Ogunseye told IJNet. "It doesn’t have to be
change on a very big scale. It could just be change in one person’s
life, 10 people’s lives or a community’s life."
As a reporter, Ogunseye, a 2014 Knight International Journalism Award winner, searched
for "any story that had to do with me writing the story and something good
coming out of it," she said.
And it's worked. Her
investigations into a top hospital’s lack of incubators for high-risk infants,
a steel plant’s pollution and a school’s dangerous pit latrine, among others,
all changed policies and improved living conditions for
Nigerians.
As she approaches the end of her
second year as executive editor, she talked with IJNet about how she fosters
this drive for impact and excellence in the newsroom she leads. Here is her
advice for editors:
1. Know your reporters and care for
them
Ogunseye knows all her reporters’
strengths and weaknesses. She knows who can finish a story quickly, and who
might take a little more time.
“It’s very important not to put all reporters
in one bucket and say they’re all the same,” Ogunseye said. “You need to
familiarize yourself with your reporters.”
As an observant editor, she also
recognizes who has potential. When a 21-year-old male reporter showed
eagerness, Ogunseye gave him a big assignment: Find out why Nigerians still
suffer from polio when most countries have eradicated the disease.
“I gave him that responsibility because
I saw that he was very enthusiastic,” she said. “He might not write it the way
I want him to write it, but that can be edited."
2. Foster well-rounded journalists
At Sunday Punch, Ogunseye works hard to
make sure reporters’ days aren’t monotonous. She’s made it a requirement that
every reporter write at least one news story a day outside his or her beat.
That rule has led to health
reporters writing about sports, and entertainment reporters filing business
stories. Not only has this created well-rounded reporters ready to handle any
story, but it’s also made the paper more diverse.
3. Create competition and a rewards
system
Ogunseye makes sure reporters know when
they’ve completed a strong story – and when they’ve failed.
Once a week, she’ll announce a story of
the week in front of the entire newsroom. The winner gets a small sum of money
and a round of applause from the entire staff. She’ll also have the staff
applaud other strong stories of the week.
“The fact that the whole newsroom is
clapping for you means the next day you’re going to do your next story with so
much success and speed,” Ogunseye said.
However, she also calls reporters out
in front of the entire newsroom for slacking off. They don't like it, she said,
"but the next week they do well. And we all clap for them.”
4. Find stories that will make a
difference for your community
As a reporter, Ogunseye insisted on
covering stories that could effect change. As an editor, she gives the
same assignments to journalists at Sunday Punch.
“I tell them to write stories Nigerians
want to read,” she explained. “What are people talking about? What is affecting
the average Nigerian?”
Ogunseye tells reporters to gain the
community’s trust so that when they have a problem, they know they can call a
journalist.
“The people that have these problems
buy the newspaper,” she said. “Once they see you’re addressing their problems,
you make them trust you.”
Source: http://ijnet.org
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