“All great societies, as all outstanding enterprises, are the end result of a great idea. Ideas do not grow in the void. Often, they come from bringing the intellect into the path of the flow of quality information and interpretation of the world. It is the seamless flow of quality information, news, analysis, and hard statistical data that BusinessDay promises to delivery”-Pat Utomi, July 1, 2001.
With the above quote, the global financial and business journalism industry received a new member twenty years ago when BusinessDay announced its entry into the media world. As normal to any start-up, the future of the newly launched newspaper was filled with suspense.
One, there were many giants in the financial journalism industry back then. The likes of Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Daily Times, and many more dominated the scene. Second, Nigeria’s media industry had many other dailies and magazines that were household names. Third, finance which is the lifeline of businesses was very hard to come by.
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Notwithstanding, the BusinessDay pioneer team was undaunted and set the ship sailing. They knew if the likes of Financial Times did not take the bull by the horn, they would not have been where they are today. Comprising Pat Utomi, Chairman; Frank Aigbogun, Publisher/CEO, and Alhaji Ibrahim Ida, Abiola Otaniyi as other board members, as well as Akinniyi Sowumi who was the pioneer editor, BusinessDay launched its giant stride on July 1, 2001.
Historic stories covered on that day included “Good inspection cripples Benin Republic”, “Banks reject foreign exchange requests”, Government interests derail oil industry”, “Is Coke losing flavour?”, “A flight of Virgin”, and “Who speaks for Africa?” , among others.
A lot of lessons have been learnt in the last twenty years. The newspaper, which initially started as a weekly publication, and due to wide acceptance of its offerings, became a daily newspaper. The media group now offers publications on Saturdays and Sundays.
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Our evolution attests to the success partnership and private equity investment could bring about. BusinessDay might not have attained the feat and status it commands today without BusinessDay South Africa and Africa Capital Alliance. They were those that associated with us at the beginning of our journey, providing the much needed network, expertise, and finance that enabled us to overcome the hurdle of inadequate capital and expertise posed to start-ups, both of which have wrecked many businesses worldwide.
BusinessDay pioneered digital subscription in Nigeria. Considering the volatility in exchange rate fluctuations, and widespread acceptance of social media platforms, it became expedient to improvise to circumvent the age-long problem of exchange rate volatility. The acceptance of digital subscription by the teaming readers gives the management of the newspaper that it took the right decision a few years ago.
The bouquet of services being offered now includes conferences services. This unit came on board because of the need to bring together captains of industry, policymakers, international development institutions, and public office holders to deliberate on how to move the nation forward. It has since recorded tremendous progress.
In the last twenty years, BusinessDay’s reporters and analysts have served Nigeria, West Africa and the global business community with first-rate business and financial intelligence that have helped government officials optimise resources, and businesses explore untapped opportunities to transform their organisations within the competitive landscape.
Their works have been recognised within and outside Nigeria, and these have earned them recognition across the globe. Some of the awards they have consistently won include the Citi Journalistic Excellence Awards, PWC Awards, Sanlam Financial Journalism Award, SEC, and other investigative journalism merit awards.
The next twenty years and beyond promise to be interesting and challenging for the media industry, and BusinessDay, while aspiring to be the dominant force in financial journalism, promises to offer much more enriched content than what it offered in the past.
Although, we do not see print media disappearing totally, we accept the reality that digital media services will command significant attention in the next two decades. This will be shaped by demographics as majority of the world’s population are less than 35 years old and with improvement in technology, more people in both the urban and rural areas will have access to internet services.
Financial journalism in the next two decades will not be complete without data analytics, as we foresee our readers asking for more value-added services for them to successfully navigate the myriads of challenges confronting them in their day to day business decision making and public governance. In all of these, BusinessDay will be there not to only meet the needs of our prospective and current readers, we promise to surpass their expectations.
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