Read The Remaining Part Of This Article On www.guardian.ng

For over one year now, the quotation above has become a “new normal” on some pages of our beloved newspaper, The Guardian in Nigeria. It suddenly appeared without a fore notification to its coming, just like the wild surprise I got reading from my age-long revered Ray Ekpu, Dan Agbese and Yakubu Mohammed in The Guardian. The Guardian has been my first choice newspaper reading since 1984 when I was an advanced level student at the then Rivers State School of Basic Studies, now Captain Elechi Amadi Polytechnic, Rumuola, Port Harcourt.

I do not have the authority to question the decisions of the newspaper’s management. But as an ardent disciple reader and contributor (articles and letters), I guess I have the privilege of expressing my opinion on what the newspaper does I do not like. I do not know if the decision to publish things in the internet and hardcopy considered the advantages of reading materials in hard copy over softcopy. At my age and other readers of the same age bracket, we would prefer to read the newspaper’s hard copy and that is why I buy The Guardian at least thrice weekly: Thursday, Friday and Sunday. I am sure it was also the reason one of my former directors-general (DGs) would buy The Guardian daily, instead of reading from the internet.

As a business organization, where do you make more money from the internet copy or hard copy? If it is hardcopy as I envisage, then allow us to read the full stories in the hardcopy.

As an organization, have you considered the troubles and inconveniences reading a story or article and suddenly, the story or article is stopped and one is directed to read the remaining part on the internet? At that point, what if one does not have data or access to the internet? The thought flow is disrupted and the purpose of reading the story to understand the issue is defeated. To worsen the matter, how does it feel reading half of four stories or articles, and without the authors’ conclusions? To me, this is the sad and sorry part of incompletely publishing the stories or articles.

I am pretty sure there may be some lucrative advantages that lured management to publish articles half in The Guardian. Such cannot outweigh its demerits as claimed above.

My final take is, let us have articles and stories published in full, add more pages to the newspaper and increase the price to N300 per copy.

Compliments of the seasons.

Okachikwu Dibia

Maitama, Abuja.