The Challenges of Newspaper Management in Information and Communication Technology Age: The Nigerian Situation

The paper set out to examine the challenges of newspaper management in information and communication technology age, paying attention to the Nigerian situation. The study seeks to achieve the following objectives: to find out the challenges of newspaper management in a digital age, to determine the regularity of change of ICT facilities in select newspapers, to find out the impact of ICTs adoption in operating cost and revenue and to explore ways of handling ICTs challenges. The paper employs two theoretical propositions as its basis. First, is the change theory and the second is mediamorphosis theory. The survey research method was adopted while the questionnaire was used as an instrument of data collection. Findings show that the challenges of newspaper management are administrative in terms of operating cost, security, and fall in revenue and challenge from social media. A key issue in newspaper management is the combination of editorial decisions with technical decisions to bring about quality print run. More so, the decision of which ICTs facility to acquire, when and how, poses a challenge to management. This is because of the state of social infrastructures, such as electricity, Internet penetration; etc, that put undue pressure on management. The costs of maintaining these facilities run into millions of naira. The paper concludes that while ICTs may have influenced the practice of journalism substantially, they have in strong ways, raised several challenges to the management of newspapers in Nigeria, where the economic downturn, poor social infrastructures and the death of media technology experts are putting strain on managers. The paper therefore, among others recommends that a good number of the administrative challenges can be overcome if government provides the needed social infrastructures, which the media need to operate. In this sense, government should improve on the power supply situation so that ICT facilities can function under the right environment.