Nigerian newspapers, part 2

I have a few comments as follow-up to my previous article on newspapers.   Newspapers here are big and dense.  I’m not sure what the average article length is, but I would guess it is at least double the U.S. average. There isn’t a strict separation between news and opinion.  Articles tend to bury what could be a good news article under melodramatic stories; the article ends without digging into the next layer.  Writing styles seem to favor a Dickensonian verboseness, and the lofty vocabulary sometimes makes me think of a poor writer who dresses up a piece by using a thesaurus to upgrade most words.  After sorting through the stories and the lofty syntax, you frequently find very little news underneath. Here is a good example.

Ads are much more personality-driven.  Many ads have pictures of the company head, and many are posed as interviews with the head of a company about their background and extraordinary success.  Not sure if this is someone's ego coming out, if there is just more cult of personality around here, or if it is a reflection of the more relationship-based business world.

I’m also amazed by the amount of print produced.  The newspapers are all dense, and everyone prints something.  Two people in my small client office have self-published books or pamphlets.  Every organization has a newsletter or magazine.  My client produces a monthly 30-page company newspaper of incredibly dense 10-pt font.  A lot of the articles are “so and so had a meeting with such and such commission or bigwig” that quote each person’s pre-written niceties.

The latest one did have this gem, though.  They had a humor page, and they highlighted the Duggars from the U.S.

From an American perspective, perhaps the most entertaining part is that the Duggars would be highlighted in a section entitled "Something Queer."