Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2024.
In the fall of 1963, Kwame Nkrumah spoke to journalists at the second Conference of Africa Journalists in Accra. Nkrumah was trying to articulate what he thought African journalism was and what it should be in the new political dispensation. Another speaker at this event was philosopher and professor William Emmanuel Abraham, whose worry was that education — especially colonial education — had a seductive quality to it, and journalists risked worrying more about the concern of foreigners than of Africans.
I highlight these two speeches because it strikes me that journalists in Africa and journalism scholars are still wrestling with what it means to be an African journalist. Not just a journalist in Africa, but an African journalist specifically. The former refers to a journalist who happens to be working in Africa, while the latter takes the identities of African and journalist as constitutive parts of an overarching identity.
To be an African journalist, they need to derive their identity from the continent while performing the identity of a journalist. As I have been wrapping up a project on this very question, I’ve found myself hoping that next year will be the year when journalism in Africa will unashamedly embrace its Africanness.
It’s frustrating that in 2023, we’re still trying to figure out what African journalism is. Once you start looking at journalism in Africa — especially the type that focuses on telling the story of Africa and Africans to an African audience — some troubling questions arise. For example, African journalists are more likely to marginalize African voices when covering events next door in strangely similar, and sometimes worse, ways to journalists in minority world countries such as the U.S. The continent is performing a journalism that is essentially one of Black faces behind white norms. A journalism that still defines its normative approach as exogenous and through American logics. We see a journalism imbued with what media scholar Wunpini Mohammed calls an “everydayness of colonization.” A profession that treats non-Africans as experts on questions dealing with Africa[ns] when covering global events unfolding on the continent.
How should we understand a journalism that does not seem anchored in its Africanness? It’s partly due to how journalists were trained in the early days of independence, when they were to write for the man “in the biscuit factory” whose primary interest was sports. This is because most curricula on the continent are likely to look very similar to what students are reading in a journalism program in the U.S. While some may consider this a good thing, it makes the canons of the discipline primarily American and white. Many of them are/were woefully unfamiliar with the African reality.
It’s bewildering that this continues to be the case. Scholars like Francis Nyamnjoh and Ylva Rodny-Gumede have decried the fact that education (especially journalism education) and news organizations are still structured around colonial logics. Thus, a Black face/white norm journalism is one that is anchored in the logics and normative approaches of minority world countries such as the U.S. It is a journalism that is talking without speaking, that is hearing without listening. As a result, it is a journalism that, as Nyamnjoh argues, is “deaf and dumb to the particularities of journalism in and on Africa.” It participates in its own capitulation while working hand in glove to marginalize the same voices it claims to represent in its insistence on aligning itself with norms and approaches that are exogenous.
As we enter 2024, I want to return to the Nkrumah speech and think through what a journalism embracing its Africanness could look like. Perhaps it is a journalism that thinks of itself as attuned to the needs of its audiences. It is a journalism that takes The Continent’s and The Elephant’s reimagining of a journalism of care. 2024 should be the year when the identities of “African” and “journalist” become strongly aligned without worry that this alignment is somehow not “professional enough.” It is a journalism that eschews Western normative approaches while also recalling the revolutionary roots of a profession nurtured by deep wells of political consciousness. Most importantly, I hope that 2024 is the year that journalists begin treating Africans not just as experts of Africa but also as consumers craving nuance and quality. 2024 is thus the year when African journalism takes Africa as its business.
j. Siguru Wahutu is an assistant professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University.
In the fall of 1963, Kwame Nkrumah spoke to journalists at the second Conference of Africa Journalists in Accra. Nkrumah was trying to articulate what he thought African journalism was and what it should be in the new political dispensation. Another speaker at this event was philosopher and professor William Emmanuel Abraham, whose worry was that education — especially colonial education — had a seductive quality to it, and journalists risked worrying more about the concern of foreigners than of Africans.
I highlight these two speeches because it strikes me that journalists in Africa and journalism scholars are still wrestling with what it means to be an African journalist. Not just a journalist in Africa, but an African journalist specifically. The former refers to a journalist who happens to be working in Africa, while the latter takes the identities of African and journalist as constitutive parts of an overarching identity.
To be an African journalist, they need to derive their identity from the continent while performing the identity of a journalist. As I have been wrapping up a project on this very question, I’ve found myself hoping that next year will be the year when journalism in Africa will unashamedly embrace its Africanness.
It’s frustrating that in 2023, we’re still trying to figure out what African journalism is. Once you start looking at journalism in Africa — especially the type that focuses on telling the story of Africa and Africans to an African audience — some troubling questions arise. For example, African journalists are more likely to marginalize African voices when covering events next door in strangely similar, and sometimes worse, ways to journalists in minority world countries such as the U.S. The continent is performing a journalism that is essentially one of Black faces behind white norms. A journalism that still defines its normative approach as exogenous and through American logics. We see a journalism imbued with what media scholar Wunpini Mohammed calls an “everydayness of colonization.” A profession that treats non-Africans as experts on questions dealing with Africa[ns] when covering global events unfolding on the continent.
How should we understand a journalism that does not seem anchored in its Africanness? It’s partly due to how journalists were trained in the early days of independence, when they were to write for the man “in the biscuit factory” whose primary interest was sports. This is because most curricula on the continent are likely to look very similar to what students are reading in a journalism program in the U.S. While some may consider this a good thing, it makes the canons of the discipline primarily American and white. Many of them are/were woefully unfamiliar with the African reality.
It’s bewildering that this continues to be the case. Scholars like Francis Nyamnjoh and Ylva Rodny-Gumede have decried the fact that education (especially journalism education) and news organizations are still structured around colonial logics. Thus, a Black face/white norm journalism is one that is anchored in the logics and normative approaches of minority world countries such as the U.S. It is a journalism that is talking without speaking, that is hearing without listening. As a result, it is a journalism that, as Nyamnjoh argues, is “deaf and dumb to the particularities of journalism in and on Africa.” It participates in its own capitulation while working hand in glove to marginalize the same voices it claims to represent in its insistence on aligning itself with norms and approaches that are exogenous.
As we enter 2024, I want to return to the Nkrumah speech and think through what a journalism embracing its Africanness could look like. Perhaps it is a journalism that thinks of itself as attuned to the needs of its audiences. It is a journalism that takes The Continent’s and The Elephant’s reimagining of a journalism of care. 2024 should be the year when the identities of “African” and “journalist” become strongly aligned without worry that this alignment is somehow not “professional enough.” It is a journalism that eschews Western normative approaches while also recalling the revolutionary roots of a profession nurtured by deep wells of political consciousness. Most importantly, I hope that 2024 is the year that journalists begin treating Africans not just as experts of Africa but also as consumers craving nuance and quality. 2024 is thus the year when African journalism takes Africa as its business.
j. Siguru Wahutu is an assistant professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University.
