Intervention will be six months old later this month. It is coinciding not just with the last month of the year but also with mergers, absorption and expansion at our own small level. All these are sources of joy, particularly when added to the critical but honest reviews we asked for and got from a number of people who have watched us taking the first few steps in the online approach to media business. Those views are invaluable inputs to the theory and practice of an intellectual and patriotic approach to journalism as an instrument of nation and state building in the African context. We are mightily encouraged by those views because they also contribute to the possibility of starting from nothing to produce something. For the past six months, Intervention has been a test run of that possibility.
When one of our unpaid advisors told us early in the aftermath of the birth of Intervention that the traffic was miraculous, the temptation was to think that he was only trying to strengthen our resolve. But he spoke the truth. The traffic relating to one single story we wrote within the first three weeks of our birth was enough to show we were, indeed, on the move. That is beside our steep climb up from a starting point of 10.3 million in Alexia ranking to 2,000,000 million at the end of the second month, a position which we have basically maintained. These are all very satisfactory even as the ambition is to see ourselves in the 1,000,000 league. On the whole, we are mightily encouraged. We believe we are making a point and contributing to national interest.
Intervention has operated on a rather critical, opinion journalism deriving from the belief that all journalism entail narratives and it is thus about, after and beyond interventionism by way of early warning, securitisation and de-securitisation, inclusion and exclusion, empowerment and stability or tension management. But the paper itself is not established to serve any rigid interests in opposition to the Nigerian people. It is rather a provider of perspectives, a tradition in which analysis leads the news, a process in which a statist preference has predominated. There is nothing to apologise about that since there is no media organisation that doesn’t subscribe to one core orientation or the other and proudly so, such as The Economist. It means we are against no particular individuals, interests, institutions or constituted authority at any levels. Neither the social and moral consciousness of all associates of Intervention nor the truly global reach of the online facility permit that possibility. As such, we expected whoever had any reasons or reservations about us would confront us in the market place of ideas instead of mean intrigues against us in the dark. That expectation was not naivety but an expression of our belief that God is just and righteous, Almighty and all knowing. We submit to Him and Him alone as our shepherd. That is why, without a godfather, we could step out with a theory and practice of journalism to which cringing is strange. It has been fulfilling.
In the meantime, it is time for expansion and diversification, both from within and in terms of incorporation of new interests and partners. The managerial, administrative and editorial changes involved in this compel a comprehensive review with a view to rebranding. The amount of work involved in the re-negotiation of the business model and the corresponding operational compartmentalisation to effect the outcome will necessarily slow us down during the exercise. By current estimation, this process should be completed in no time. While it is on, the website will run but at very, very skeletal levels. When we come back, it would be a much richer Intervention with the incorporation of new sections reflecting the business and other considerations of the in-coming interests and partners.
The management takes this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed to this becoming so far. In particular, we must single out some operators in the online newspaper constituency for their solidarity when this newest entrant did so July 2016 and ever since. Once again, we thank all our esteemed readers. We have not only read and taken note of every comments and responses to every single story we posted, 193 of them so far, we have indeed studied each of such comments. And when we come back, each sentiment will be seen to count.
Signed
Management
December 4th, 2016
