An evaluation of current trends in energy and business specialised journalism

Abstract

The article evaluates current trends in energy and business specialised journalism, and provides perspectives on how to report the sub-sector effectively. It posits that business, economic and energy reporting constitutes a branch of journalism which tracks, analyses and interprets changes in the economic state of a society’s critical sectors of energy and business. In recent times, specialized newspapers in business have been launched while some mainstream papers would not miss the business section. The paper reasons that, in many instances, a business and energy story should be no different from a general news story as it must be accurate, thorough, well researched, balanced and fair. But, it needs to contain multiple sources of information to authenticate numbers, specific data and statistics which are the ingredients that help to make sense of the energy and business stories. It is advocated that for a journalist to achieve a balanced energy and business report, s/he must be objective, current, concise, clear and simple. The study contends that such challenges as inadequate research facilities, information hoarding, scarcity of well-trained and qualified science and technology reporters, illiteracy, poor data base, among others, still bedevil the special area. Therefore, it advocates the employment of current information and communications technologies (ICTs) tools such as software packages to edit visuals, audio-visuals and graphics; a hand-held scanner for digitising documents on the spot; a satellite telephone; videophone. It equally advocates that in addition to the regular undergraduate and postgraduate training, reporters in this emerging area in the Nigerian media ecosystem require continued training and retraining to keep abreast of critical developments.