The work of the journalist is not in the title. It’s in the impact. If you continue to think that the only license you have to refer to yourself as a journalist is because you read mass communication in school, then you are actually living in the past. Howsoever be it, I cannot remember at anytime Efio-Ita Nyok called himself a journalist. If I am wrong I stand to be corrected. I have also asked that question several times.
Is Efio a journalist?
Because he has actually created more impact in journalism in Cross River state than most people who call themselves journalists merely because they read journalism. He is practically inspiring more young people in the development of the profession in our State than even some scholars and most “professional journalists” who have reduced the job to press releases.
Apart from crossriverwatch.com calitown.com and calabarblog.com the most consistent blog reporting Cross River state through thick and thin has been negroidhaven.
Most of the people throwing jabs at efio, the blogger-in-chief of the platform, have tried and failed with their own blogs but in more than five years, negroidhaven has remained consistent in creating content that sustains their readership.
From experience, I know the challenges and the sheer determination that is required to sustain content in a blog that focuses on a conservative political environment like our State and the effort that must have been shovelled in to keep such pedestal.
Efio Ita has never kept anyone in doubt about his preferred designation. He popularized blogger-in-chief as different from Editor-in-Chief. Ab initio, he had insisted that, though he is gathering and disseminating information, he is doing so as a blogger and not otherwise.
Though blogging is actually journalism, he has never preferred to be addressed as a journalist above blogger. I have quarreled with him and called him names and that’s to his knowledge but his consistency stands him above many of his critics and that is my humble opinion to this discussion.
This opinion is strictly mine.
Agba Jalingo writes from Lagos, Nigeria.
