Veteran Journalist & Editor, Mike Awoyinfa will be 70 in the next few weeks, and he is excited about it.
A few days back, City People team led by Publisher SEYE KEHINDE visited him to get his 70th Birthday interview. It was a very revealing one.
Below are excerpts of the interview.
You will be 70 in a few weeks from now. How does it make you feel?
Haaaa! Really, I don’t know. I thought I will remain young forever. I didn’t know old age will catch up with me. Old age comes with a whole lot of challenges, like health challenges, baggage and all that. In all of these, we thank God that HE has kept us alive and the lesson I have learnt in all these is that one should be always thankful to God. One should always be grateful to God.
We journalists, our motto should be: we should be ready, anything can happen to anybody at any time when you don’t expect it. News will always break. I never knew that my friend Dimgba Igwe will die when he did. That is his house over there, next door to mine. That is life. Anything can happen. I never knew Sunny Ojegbase, my friend will die. There are so many examples like that. Every day that you find yourself awake, and you wake up, you should be grateful to God and know that it is not your own doing. That there is a bigger force in life.
Once you really follow the ideals of goodness, and the ideals of Christianity, civility, and all those values, you will make it in life.
The greatest people in life are humble people. Humility is very, very key. We should all learn from humble people. It is great hitting 70. I pray I reach there.
I haven’t reached 70 yet. It is still a few weeks away. I pray that by God’s grace, whatever the devil says won’t work. The devil is a liar. I must see the face of 70 and beyond. It has not been easy healthwise. I have had to manage my Prostate Cancer issue. I will talk about that later.
Do you feel fulfilled with what you have been able to do professionally and in life?
I am always greedy for success when it comes to journalism. I want to achieve more than I have achieved. I thank God for the little that God has used me to achieve. Looking back, I can count my blessings, from my years as a Reporter, under the late Dele Giwa. He mentored me. He taught me the Bolts and the Nuts of Journalism. I learnt a lot from him. He also learnt a lot from me. In life, with every opportunity that comes your way, you must learn, you must learn and learn.
What changed my life was the attachment programme I went for in the UK. It was a Commonwealth Journalism training programme.
I was attached to The Sunday, SUN Newspaper in Castle Upon Tyne. There I sharpened my nose and brain for Tabloid Journalism. When it comes to Tabloid, you can’t beat them. I learnt more about how to cast headlines. Shortly after I came back, I was moved to the Features Desk, as the Features Editor in National Concord. Initially, I thought it was a demotion, but my Editor then, Sina Adedipe said just go there, take it up, prove yourself. I did. I had just written a book with my colleague Dimgba Igwe. We had written the book: The Art Of Features Writing. When I got there, I realised that what they were doing was not Features writing, they were just writing Essays. So, I told them, no way. Let’s start something new. We caused a shift, a paradigm shift in the Art Of Features Writing. We started looking at Features right from Human Angle stories. Bizarre things, things that were commonly uncommon. We created various columns like Man In The Street, Faces & Places and people started reading National Concord because of our input. We changed the newspaper in a way. Every place one goes or in every situation you find yourself, one should do his best. You don’t know who is watching. My MD was so impressed with what I was doing. So she called me one day and said “Mike, I just came back from a holiday. I have a challenge I want to give you. I want you to start a Saturday paper. That was in 1989. Go and give me a dummy.”
I had just had my twins in 1988. And we Yorubas, we believe once you have twins, good things happen to you.
So, I sat down and started thinking of change. How can we change things? How can we do a paper that is different? I looked at British newspapers to get inspiration and ideas.
As at that time, Dele Momodu was in African Concord, we were close. He too was writing for me. I told Dele to come and join me in Weekend Concord. Initially, he didn’t understand the concept. So, he was reluctant to come. Eventually, he joined me. We built that team. My team was built around Dele Momodu, Femi Adesina, Eric Osagie, and some other guys, brilliant guys. That was my best moment as a journalist. We were very fresh. We were young. We were creative. We could see news from every dimension.
Our brains were sharp. There was also Omololu Kassim, a crack reporter. He was always on the street. He got good human angle stories. I remember the story he did about a mad man on the street or was he a Prophet? Every morning he will be ringing bell, and saying Prepare The Kingdom Of God I said Oya Go and Track him down.
Then, Dele Momodu brought the story about the love life of Prof. Wole Soyinka. He went to meet his wife, the Librarian. She gave Dele a very, very interesting story about the love life of Prof. Wole Soyinka. That was our opener.
That was our front page.
The lesson here is when you are coming with a new newspaper, the stories must be strong. It’s like an Atomic Bomb, the stories must shake them. It was one great story that everybody resonated with.
It has all the elements you can think of about news – A Great Personality, Soyinka. He had not won the Nobel as at that time. The man was very angry. He threatened Dele Momodu, bla, bla, bla. But I was very happy. Why! Because that is the definition of news. News is something that somebody does not want you to publish about him. The rest is advert. The rest is advertising.
That is why when I see younger journalists, I like to tell them that look, News Is The Best Thing That God Ever Created. Look For It. Look For It.
Whenever you are covering news with your colleagues, it’s like WAR! It is like a race. You want to outwit everybody. Think deep! Think! Think! If you are given an assignment, spend the whole night thinking about it. What is my angle? How will I approach it? That is what I do ooo, as a reporter. For any story, I go to cover I always ask myself the question. What is everybody’s angle? How can mine be different? I will analyse everybody’s angle first. Then, what is Mike Awoyinfa’s angle? You must differentiate yourself if you want to really excel in this profession.
There must be a market differentiation. In Marketing, Differentiation is the key to everything.
How about coming up with good headlines?
Wow! That is there too. Good headlines. That is another different differentiation thing too. You will look at headline casting. You will ask the question: How is everybody going to cast headline? You look at the obvious. What is the obvious? How is everybody going to cast his headline tomorrow and then you ask yourself? How am I going to do mine? It involves a whole lot of introspection and creativity. It is not just words. It also involves pictures, photographs. Photos that convey messages. Photos that speak. Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! My most unforgettable headline that people say was for the late Alaafin of Oyo when he was arrested in the UK for allegedly carrying drugs. He was in trouble over drugs in the UK.
It happened on Friday and we were going to town on Saturday. I had to ask myself some questions. What is it? Everybody has reported that Alaafin was arrested for drugs.
I said it’s okay. You guys go to the library and bring me all the pictures of Alaafin. And they brought about 5 pictures. I put the 1st down. I put the 2nd down. I put the 3rd down and I saw the one that can fit the story.
He was laughing in that photograph. I said wow. This is it. This will sell the cover. So I said to myself, see Alaafin laughing. And I wrote the headline Alaafin Laughs, Not Alaafin Matter.
That is for me, a headline I have not been able to match or beat. It is not because I wrote it. Even if I am praising myself, I have the right to praise myself as a professional.
What made Weekend Concord & The Sun sell at the time I was in charge with Dimgba Igwe was because of our ability to differentiate, ability to do the extraordinary, and ability to give readers what they want to read.
