Another "Legon Observer"?

Mr. Mahmoud Jahah’s recent launching of a college-student-oriented newspaper called the “Student Observer” (see “Students’ Newspaper Launched in Accra, Ghanaweb.com 10/11/07), recalls another newspaper of yesteryear called “The Legon Observer.” The latter, though, was far more than a college newspaper, for it featured perspicuous contributions from great minds like Professors A. Adu-Boahen and L. H. Ofosu-Appiah. I had the rare privilege, as a student of St. Peter’s Secondary School, of reading the then-renowned and politically feared “Legon Observer.”

It is so long ago, relatively speaking, of course, that I don’t even remember the person who availed me a copy of that august intellectual force to reckon with (all puns intended, of course). Most likely, it must have been one of my sixth-form seniors. For thanks to the likes of Dr. Kenneth Attafuah, yours truly was one of the few students allowed to make profitable use of the enviable resources of St. Peter’s’ Sixth-Form Library.

In any case, what promises to be fascinating about the “Student Observer,” at least as reportedly envisaged by Mr. Mac Diamond Emekor Nyamekor, a host of TV-3, is the paper’s objective of enhancing the reading skills of its target audience. If so, then it may be necessary for most of the tertiary institutions in the country to incorporate the “Student Observer” into their curricula on a voluntary basis, of course. For Mahlid Communications Limited, the publisher of the “Student Observer,” is a niche-carving, private entrepreneur. Nonetheless, it cannot be gainsaid that catering to the intellectual and professional, or career, needs of college-level students is a noble venture that ought to be unreservedly applauded and financially supported.

Then also, incorporating the “Student Observer” into many a tertiary Ghanaian institutional curriculum, may almost certainly ensure that the average Ghanaian student would cultivate the salutary habit of reading beyond his/her coursework, as has traditionally been the norm. Also, the fact that the newspaper would largely highlight issues of relevance to Ghanaian society, would logically ensure that any knowledge acquired through readership of the “Student Observer” would find organic application in Ghanaian society. For the latter, in essence, is what education for the constructive development of society is all about.

Here in the United States, for example, many colleges – and even high schools – make a curricular use of the “New York Times,” among other equally reputable, proverbial newspapers of record. This is done through discounted subscriptions; and the newspapers are routinely used in such seminal academic and cultural disciplines as English Composition, Journalism and Sociology. Indeed, so sectionally diverse is the fare of such newspapers as the “New York Times,” “Washington Post,” “Chicago Tribune” and the “Los Angeles Times,” for a handful of examples, that almost any one of these papers could be used virtually “across the curriculum,” simply meaning that they each of them, that is the afore-referenced newspapers, could be used in the sciences, social sciences (including business and economics courses) as well as the liberal arts, of course.

In Ghana, on the other hand, one would be hard put to find a newspaper whose fare or sections (content-wise) are comprehensive enough to cover every facet of the average college or university curriculum. For instance, besides a few feature stories on prosperous entrepreneurs or businessmen and women, there hardly exists any reportorial fare that specializes in such critical areas of national development such as the stock market and other relevant economic trends. This avoidable problem is largely due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of professionally trained Ghanaian journalists have marginal, if any, remarkable expertise outside of the liberal arts. And even regarding the latter multi-disciplinary discipline, the training is, at best, merely passable. Thus, for example, one can only squirm at this otherwise thoughtful, or even morally edifying, quotation attributed to Mr. Mac Diamond Emekor Nyamekor, of TV-3: “Use The Student Observer to shape students [sic] thinking and increase [sic] their reading skills[,] since reading among students has [dramatically] declined.”

Of course, it is a deafening understatement to observe the ironic decline of the cultivable habit of reading among Ghanaian college students. For by the very semantic connotation of the terms, “reading” and “being a student” are mutually interchangeable, virtually, that is. In fact, the preceding functional reality explains why students in the liberal arts and social sciences, and even the exact sciences, so-called, were traditionally said to be “reading” their disciplinary subjects, or areas of concentrated interest, at the university.

The remark that I wanted to, however, register about the Ghana News Agency (GNA) quotation attributed to Mr. Mac Diamond Emekor Nyamekor, is the limpid fact that in the English language, there is no such standard expression as “increasing” one’s reading skills – one can either “hone” one’s reading skills or simply “enhance” them, or even “perfect” the same. Then again, what with this Ghanaian obsession with double European first-names? The preceding all boils down to the fact of the publishers of the “Student Observer” hiring writers and reporters from among the ranks of the cream of Ghanaian media practitioners. This may necessitate the adjunct engagement of Ghanaian college and university lecturers and professors, if the quality of the “Student Observer” is to meet the critical intellectual, or career, needs of the college graduate

The “Student Observer” would also need to quickly become far more than a monthly newspaper. For in the Internet Age, it is nothing short of the outright laughable for anybody to be talking about publishing a “monthly newspaper,” an academic or literary journal, perhaps. The latter description of a “newspaper” belongs more to early twentieth-century Ghanaian media history.

Then also, the best target for “The Student Observer” appears more to be the high school student. An Internet edition would better cater to the relatively more fast-paced informational needs of college-level students. A limited newsstand edition, however, could be published for college-level students. And on both scores, I am willing to assist.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.