Communication and Public Affairs Manager of Google for Anglophone West Africa, Mr Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, has told media houses in Nigeria to embrace digital technology in disseminating news and information.
Kola-Ogunlade gave the advice when he paid a working visit to the Lagos Office of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday.
He said that embracing digital technology was necessary because technology and the internet had redefined the world.
The Google manager said that with tools like YouTube and other platforms, media houses could post videos online for everyone around the world to view at the same time.
According to him, with over 90 million people in Nigeria now using the internet, it behooves on media organisations to change the way they do things.
“Media organisations are no longer geographically bound, they are now global organisations because once their stories hit the net, they become global stories.
“We are no longer talking of media organisations that are media bound. Various media such as print broadcast diversify and augment each other. So, when people are searching for contents online, they don’t care from which medium it comes, whether it’s video or pictures.
”The medium division no longer exists. You can see print medium commencing a video because the consumption habit has changed the nature of operations totally.
”It takes media partners to think of a better structure of how they can deliver news. It is no longer the news happen today and being put in the papers tomorrow.
”It is now as the news comes in it should be breaking news, by tomorrow it becomes stale. Probably, you can go into details of the story later on.
“So globally, media organisations are struggling with this dynamism,” he added.
According to him, when people go to the internet, they open their minds to receive all kinds of information.
He said that the overall thing driving traffic on the internet was information; hence media houses should always provide information for readers online.
The Managing Editor of NAN Lagos Office, Mr Ogundele Bodunde, commended Google for its search engine, which he said, had assisted journalists and researchers.
Bodunde said that Google had redefined the meaning of news, “as everyone with an internet-enabled phone is now a journalist.
”We welcome the innovations from Google because they make the dissemination of news easier and faster,” he said.
